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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG; 



OR, 



THE OBLIGATION AND THE ADVANTAGES OF EARLY 

PIETY, SERIOUSLY URGED UPON 

YOUNG PERSONS, 



IN CONNEXION WITH 

Eccles. xii. 1. 



REV. GEORGE W. "LEYBURN, 

%ak iHi'sstonarg in Greece. 




NEW YORK: 
M. W. DODD, 506 BROADWAY, 

RICHMOND: 
P. B. PRICE. 

1857. 










Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by 

W. M. DODD, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 



K. CKAIGHEAD, PEINTEK, 

(Caxtcm Butltittta;, 

81, 83, and 85 Centre Street. 



A FEW WORDS TO MINISTERS OP THE GOSPEL, 
PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND OTHER PERSONS WHO 
FEEL AN INTEREST IN THE RELIGIOUS WELFARE 
OF THE YOUNG. 



The object proposed, in the preparation of this volume, has 
been to bring the claims of religion to bear upon the consciences 
and hearts of the young, in the way of direct personal address, 
and in its relation to their present age and circumstances. It is 
the obligation not merely of a consecration to God, but of an 
early consecration, which is designed to be enforced in these 
pages — I could only have desired a greater competency for the 
fulfilment of so important a task. 

I trust that there are many intelligent and thoughtful young 
persons who will be disposed, of themselves, to read what is 
here contained. But whatever may be the execution and in- 
trinsic adaptation of such a book, a great deal will depend, as to 
its utility, upon the co-operation of those who have opportuni- 
ties of access and influence with the juvenile part of the com- 
munity. Therefore is it, dear brethren and friends, that I here 
address myself to you. The minister may find occasion for 
such a book, as an auxiliary to his labors for the youthful por- 
tion of his charge. Coming from his hands, we might hope that 
it would be read under the favoring influence of that affection 
and veneration which young hearts are apt to cherish towards a 
faithful pastor, 



IV ADDRESS TO PARENTS, ETC. 

And might not a suitable book of this kind be read by Sab- 
bath-school and Bible-class teachers, and even by teachers of our 
ordinary schools, to their scholars, with the hope of good re- 
sults ? The division of this volume into chapters of moderate 
length will, I trust, be found convenient for the purpose just 
suggested. 

And if you are a parent, may not your loved ones be led to 
peruse a book of this kind, by their regard for you, where a 
higher reason would not operate ? But if not this, why not 
read it to them ? "Who that has had experience does not know 
the value of religious reading, orally practised, in the family ? 
Can the truth find a better medium or accompaniment than the 
tones of a revered father's, or of a loved mother's voice ? 

And may the solid religious reading of a former age never be 
wholly superseded ! Let us not substitute auxiliary means, 
however valuable as such, for the main instrumentalities. Let 
us remember that it is generally the direct application of truth 
to the heart, which is blessed to a saving end. 

But most of all, dear brethren and friends, I invoke the aid 
of your prayers, in order to the success of this effort. Remem- 
ber that religion has, in itself, no charms to the natural heart of 
your child, your scholar, your young friend; and that there 
must be a divine influence to make any means effectual. In- 
deed I should regard it as a very important result, if parents, 
teachers, and other friends of the young, by the consideration of 
the subject in the lights in which it is here presented, should 
themselves be led to feel a deeper impression of its importance. 

And what department of Christian labor more interesting or 
more promising ? How large a class do our young people com- 
pose ; — how important as embosoming the elements of all the 
good and evil in human character and destiny to be evolved by 
the forthcoming generation ;— -how susceptible now to our influ- 



ADDRESS TO PARENTS, ETC. V 

ence ; — how soon to pass beyond it and become the actors and 
arbiters in the events of another age ! 

Fathers, mothers, teachers, ministers of Christ ! in the groups 
of bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked ones around you, behold the future 
preceptors, church members, ministers, —yea, it may be, noble 
pioneers of the GTospel and glorious martyrs of Jesus, — whom 
you are to lead to the Saviour and train for his service ! 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE I. 

PAGE 

Early piety the subject of a special divine message. The 
attractive and impressive mode of its communication, . 17 

CHAPTER II. 

The tendency, even on the part of the young, to forget God, 
as indicating the necessity of early piety, . . .26 

CHAPTER III. 

The import of EccL xii. 1, more fully considered. The 
obligations of early piety included in the general obliga- 
tions of religion, 33 

CHAPTER IV. 

Early piety obligatory from the right which G-od has in us 
as our Creator and Redeemer, ..... 42 

chapter v. 
Early piety prescribed by God's counsel and command, . 50 

CHAPTER VI. 

The obligations of early piety not to be deferred or ne- 
glected without continual sin, . . . . .56 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

Early piety recommended by the consideration that youth 
is the time for the acquisition of good principles and 
habits, .... 65 

CHAPTER VIH. 

Early piety favored by the more propitious outward circum- 
stances of youthful life, 12 

CHAPTER IX. 

Early piety the needful preparation for the duties and trials 
of after life, . . . - 18 

chapter x. 
The advantages of early piety in respect to the holiness and 
usefulness of a subsequent Christian course, . .88 

CHAPTER XI. 

The advantages of early piety, in these respects, shown in 
examples of Scripture biography, 98 

CHAPTER XII. 

The advantages of early piety farther illustrated from the 
Christian biography of different ages, . . . .106 

chapter xni. 
Early piety peculiarly acceptable to G-od, . . . .119 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The happiness of the present and even of the future life, 
promoted by early piety, 124 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER XV. 

PAGE 

Early piety the only security against the liability of a hope - 
less early death, 134 



Parting words to the young reader, 142 



SEQUEL. 

Soliloquy of a young man passing into adult life without 
piety, 161 

An ungodly person at middle age, looking back on his ear- 
lier days, 164 

An aged person, still in an irreligious state, reverting to 
his past life, 16*7 

A Christian, in advanced years, reviewing a life-time spent 
in Glod's service, .— 171 



Remorse of a young person dying without hope, . .174 

Recollections of a departed friend whose youth had been 
given to God, . . . . . . . . 117 



WORDS TO THE YOUNG- READER. 



This volume has perhaps fallen into your hands in some merely 
casual way. Or it may be that you have taken it up on the 
kind suggestion of some Christian friend. But there is still a 
more hopeful supposition. It is that you have been led to the 
reading of it by the feeling of your own personal concern in the 
subject of which it treats. Would to God that this were true 
in every case ! 

But, whatever may have been the feeling or purpose on your 
part, wishing as I do that the book may accomplish its end, I 
have one earnest request to make. It is that you continue the 
perusal of this volume. Read it through. Read it, even if you 
find no peculiar attraction in it and feel no special interest in 
the subject. Read it for the subject's sake, and the benefit 
which you may derive from it if you read as you ought. Do 
not be content with merely turning over a few leaves to satisfy 
curiosity. The pressure of your studies or other engagements, 
or the greater fascinations of some book which falls in more 
with your present tastes, may tempt you to lay this aside. But 
I trust that you will not yield to the temptation. Certainly the 
Sabbath, if no other day, will afford the needful leisure. And 
what better time to ponder the subject-matter of these pages 
than amid the quiet and solemnity of a Sabbath morning or 
evening? But who is there that cannot — where there is a will 



Xll WORDS TO THE YOUNG READER. 

to do it — redeem, out of the hours of any day, time sufficient to 
read at least one of the brief chapters that follow ? 

Let me still further suggest that you carefully examine the 
Scripture quotations appended to these chapters. Read them 
even more than once. Let the golden words of Glod's truth 
come home to your heart. 

But there is still another thing, which I would present with 
more than the urgency of a mere suggestion. The profit of such 
a book as this to the reader depends upon the disposition with 
which it is read, more than the manner in which it is written- 
And rest assured, dear young friend, that unless you open your 
heart to what I shall say, and God shall say through me, in the 
pages following, even the entire perusal of them will be of no 
great or permanent benefit to you. If the desire of this be not 
awakened in your own mind, not all the books that you could 
read, not all the sermons that you might hear, though the best 
in the world, would produce any saving effect. How many of 
these have you already read and heard in a merely mechanical, 
if not in a very careless way. "What would the best chart or 
the most elegant compass be worth, if the vessel were not steered 
by them ? — what the most thorough acquaintance with any art 
or science, if this knowledge were never put to use ? So it is 
that many, very many, young persons suffer their early days to 
pass away, attending the Sabbath- school, listening to faithful 
preaching, enjoying the religious instructions of the family, with- 
out ever forming any strong purpose, or making any decided 
effort, or offering any really earnest prayer for salvation ; — not 
knowing or not reflecting that all the time they thus loiter, a 
tide is drifting them, almost insensibly it may be, but steadily 
and powerfully, downward toward their ruin. 

Let me beseech you, therefore, not to enter upon the perusal 
of what is here before you, without prayer. Remember, — oh, 



WORDS TO THE YOUNG READER. Xlll 

remember, that no arguments, no means of persuasion, can of 
themselves change or save you. The most ample repast may be 
provided, but all in vain for him who has no will to eat ; and the 
richest treasures will all be lost to him who will not unlock the 
coffer or draw upon the bank. So the desire, the purpose, must 
be in your heart, if any means are to be blessed to your spiritual 
welfare. 

Tou will find prayers in connexion with the several chap- 
ters : these I trust you will not only read, but endeavor to adopt 
as your own. But let me exhort you to begin the book with an 
outpouring of your heart to G-od. Join your prayer with the 
petitions which the writer has endeavored to offer for all his 
youthful readers, and with those offered by your pious friends ; — 
humbly and earnestly soliciting, through that name which we 
must ever plead for our acceptance, the grace which will enable 
you rightly to receive what is here addressed to you. 

And I feel all confidence that so doing, you will not read in 
vain. How happy will it be for you, if what I have written 
should be the means of " forming in you the hope of glory." 
Shall not this be the blessed result ? 



" REMEMBER NOW THY CREATOR IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, 
WHILE THE EVIL DAYS COME NOT, NOR THE YEARS DRAW NIGH 
WHEN THOU SHALT SAY I HAVE NO PLEASURE IN THEM." 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 



CHAPTER I, 

EARLY PIETY HAS BEEN MADE THE SUBJECT OF A 
DIRECT MESSAGE FROM GOD, CONVEYED 1ST THE 
MOST INTERESTING AND IMPRESSIVE MANNER IN 
HIS WORD, 

The first verse of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesi- 
astes, — who has not read it, or heard it, that has 
read or heard anything of the Bible ? Those words, 
"Remember now thy Creator," — whose heart has 
not felt their impregsion, as first, in the days of our 
childhood, we heard them from a parent's lips, or 
the eye fell on them in turning over the pages of 
the Bible ? 

It is not the only part of Scripture which is de- 
signed for the special encouragement and benefit of 
the interesting class of persons to whom it is ad- 
dressed. I shall refer, in what follows, to other 
passages of like character, ^nd to numerous and in- 
teresting examples of Scripture history, which have 
relation to the subject of early piety, 
2 



18 God's message to the young. 

But this contains a direct address. It may be 
called, peculiarly and eminently, a message to the 
young. I have chosen it for the subject and motto 
of the following pages, wishing that all I here un- 
dertake to say shall stand on the foundation of 
Scripture truth and sentiment. If we look at these 
well known words in their relation merely to their 
human authorship they are possessed of no mean 
interest and attraction. In the person of the writer 
we behold one of the greatest and most illustrious 
of men. It was the great and wise king of Israel, 
the "wise man" of the ancient world, whose pen 
was chosen to convey this expression of the divine 
interest in the young. 

History might be challenged to produce a person 
more capable from his position and circumstances 
of giving advice to the old or the young. From 
early to advanced life he filled one of the most im- 
portant public stations ever occupied by any man. 
And no man ever made a more full experiment of 
human life than this royal writer. Divine munifi- 
cence may be said to have laid itself out to expend 
on him the highest measure of temporal good 
that any mortal was ever permitted to enjoy. " I 
was my father's son, tender and only beloved in 
the sight of my mother" (Pro v. iv. 3). "Wisdom 
and knowledge is grauted unto thee ; and I w T ill 
give thee riches, and wealth, and honor, such as none 
of the kings have had that have been before thee, 
neither shall there any after thee have the like" (2 
Chron. i. 12). 

Perhaps all this was done for him, with a view of 



god's message to the young. 19 

showing, in his example, how unsatisfying in them- 
selves, and how dangerous to the best interests of 
the soul, are all mere worldly enjoyments ; and that 
the record of his case, in its results, might be made 
by his own pen, for the benefit of all mankind. 

Where lived there ever a human being around 
whom clustered such a combination of all that the 
world values ? The eminence which men would 
commonly deem it the great achievement of a life- 
time to reach in any one particular of worldly ad- 
vantage or prosperity, this favored man enjoyed in 
all. Our Saviour himself, when he would produce, 
from all preceding history, the highest illustration 
of human wisdom or of human glory, points us to 
Solomon (see Matt. vi. 29 and xii. 2). Elegance of 
person and manners, genius, learning, wealth, pow- 
er, fame, — all these were his and in the largest mea- 
sure. What more of earthly good would it seem 
that any heart could crave ? 

And no man ever enjoyed better opportunities of 
studying the world of men around him than did he, 
from the lofty point of observation to which his 
royal station exalted him, and for which his philoso- 
phical mind so well fitted him. He had studied all, 
he had tried all, of what the world can in itself 
afford of good ; and the book of Ecclesiastes seems 
to embody the great king's review of human exist- 
ence.* Indeed it is a fact worthy of particular no- 

* If the reader would see a brilliant delineation of Solomon 
himself, and an elegant paraphrase and exposition of Ecclesi- 
astes, he is referred to the Rev. James Hamilton's "Royal 
Preacher." 



20 GOD'S message to the young. 

tice, on the part of every youthful reader of the 
Bible, that two entire books of it, from his pen, 
seem to have been composed, in great part, with a 
special view to the benefit of persons in the outset 
of life. The portion contained in the first nine 
chapters, of what is comprehended under the name 
of the Book of Proverbs, may be considered as con- 
stituting of itself an entire and independent book. 
It seems to have been dedicated to some young 
man — probably one of the king's own sons — and to 
have been composed with the express object of set- 
ting forth the duties and temptations of youthful 
life, which it exhibits with great power of exhorta- 
tion and warning. It merits, therefore, the parti- 
cular study of all young persons. 

And here, in this book of Ecclesiastes — the vo- 
lume of his experience and his study of the world— 
in the close of his writings and the closing years of 
his life, this great man turns to the same class again. 
This sentence in the conclusion of Ecclesiastes con- 
tains a sentiment similar to that with which the 
Book of Proverbs begins (Prov. i. 7), where we are 
told that " the fear of the Lord is the beginning," 
or " chief part," " of knowledge." The two brief 
expressions seem to embody the sum and practical 
point of all that he wrote in both of those great 
books of sacred philosophy. But in these conclud- 
ing lines of his contributions to the sacred writings, 
the sentiment turns into a strain of lofty and solemn 
exhortation. The whole passage contained in the 
twelfth of Ecclesiastes, so full of striking and beau- 
tiful imagery, may be considered as a sermon, of 



god's message to the young. 21 

which the words of the first verse are the text. 
From the exalted position which he held, looking 
round on the world which he had so fully tried and 
was now soon to leave, and looking forward through 
all time, this most eminent of men here seems to 
stand and preach to the youthful readers of the 
Bible, in every generation and all over the world. 
" Son, daughter," he seems to say, " set not your 
heart on this w-orld. Even were it, in all respects, 
what it pretends, and promises you to be, how fool- 
ish to run the risk which you would do to gain it, if 
pursued in an unsanctified manner. But it is far 
from being, in its unhallowed enjoyments, what, to 
your inexperienced and credulous eyes, it would 
seem to be. I have seen, I have tried what the 
world can yield to satisfy a human spirit. I have 
found it 4 vanity ;' — yes, all is vanity, the very 
4 vanity of vanities.' Nor think that the duties 
which you owe the Author of your being are such 
as belong more appropriately to maturer years. I 
have passed through the various stages of life to its 
last ; and I solemnly admonish you that your com- 
ing days, if you live to be older, instead of being 
either happy in the enjoyment of what the world 
now promises you, or favorable to the care of your 
spiritual interests, will, in both these particulars, be 
to you ' evil days,' emphatically evil ; and more 
and more so, the longer you live. Hearken, there- 
fore, to one who leaves this his last solemn testi- 
mony for those that are to come after him, to the 
end of time, and 'remember now your Creator.'" 
Thus speaks Solomon, becoming a "preacher" to 



22 god's message to the young. 

the youthful world. How solemn, how impressive 
that voice, as it sounds over the tracts of time, from 
nearly three thousand years ago ! 

But coming as do these words of his, through the 
pages of Scripture, and under divine inspiration, 
they convey not merely the sentiments of one of the 
wisest and greatest of mortals. They stand on the 
sacred page by divine authority. The illustrious 
monarch and philosopher speaks indeed as such, 
but he speaks also as a divine oracle. The closing 
words of Ecclesiastes contain God's own message 

TO THE YOUNG. 

And how interesting as such ! A divine illumi- 
nation shines from the page ; a divine voice speaks 
in these words. With what veneration should they 
be received ! How ought they to be studied and 
delighted in by all of those to w^hom they are ad- 
dressed ! How perpetually before the eyes, how 
deeply graven on the heart of every youth ! 

We find nothing like this anywhere in the sacred 
volume, addressed to any other class of persons. 
God has singled out the young, from all the human 
family, as the objects of his special regard. But it 
is not enough to say that this divine communication 
is addressed to all who belong to a certain class. 
It is even yet more distinctive. It speaks as if to 
one person. It adopts the singular number. " Thy 
Creator," M thy youth," is the language employed. 
What does this mean but that the message here 
announced is to be received, by every young per- 
son, as if it were directed singly and personally to 
him or her ? It is just as much so in God's design, 



god's message to the young. 23 

my young friend, as if you were the only individual 
of all the human family to be thus addressed — as 
much so as if it came to you directly from Him, 
through an angel's hand, and with your name in- 
scribed upon it. How interesting in this point of 
view to every youthful reader of the Bible ! And 
with what profound reverence, what earnest atten- 
tion, what grateful love, what submission of the 
heart, what ready obedience, ought such a commu- 
nication from Heaven to be received by all of those 
to whom it is thus addressed ? Will you not thus 
receive it, dear reader ? 

11 Solomon in all his glory " (Matt v. 29). 

** We have also a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto 
ye do well that ye take heed" (2 Pet L 19). 

" All scripture is given by inspiration of God" (1 Tim. hi. 16). 

11 The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man : but 
holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost " 
(2 Pet. i. 21). 

" The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with 
the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came 
from the utmost parts of the earth, to hear the wisdom of Solo- 
mon ; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here " (Luke xL 
31). 

" Only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord 
thy God"(Deut xv. 5). 

MEDITATION AND PRAYER. 

" Remember thy Creator." Yes, they are fami- 
liar words. To read or hear them recalls some of 
the earliest and most sacred recollections of child- 
hood. A father's, a mother's voice and love seem 
to hallow them in my memory. 



24 GOD'S message to the you^g. 

And how venerable in their antiquity and their au- 
thorship ! They sound from the tomb of departed 
greatness. They issue from the deep recesses of cen- 
turies long gone by. Age, wisdom, experience, speak 
in them. Dignity of station, power of intellect, pro- 
foundness of learning, amplitude of observation, all 
conspire to give them force. Nay, rather, do they 
not seem to come invested w T ith the solemnities of 
that spirit-world to w T hich, laying down his mortal 
honors in the dust, he who penned them has long 
since departed ? 

But it is not merely the voice of one of the most 
gifted and honored of men that I hear in these 
words. It is a voice that proceeds from the Author 
of my being. It is His epistle, His message. It 
asserts His claim, it teaches my duty, it admonishes 
me of what concerns my interests and my safety. 
If I were alone with God in the universe, or the 
only inhabitant of earth, how profoundly would 
my mind be impressed by such a communication 
from the Almighty ! And is it not as much de- 
signed for me, and of as high interest to me, as if I 
were thus alone ? 

Surely, if He has deemed it so important thus to 
speak to me, I ought to deem it equally important 
that I should listen ! And if He has made it per- 
sonal to me, shall I not make it personal to myself? 

Thou great Father of my being ! dost Thou con- 
descend to me, Thy creature, and shall I not pay 
Thee the most prompt and most deferential regard ? 
Shall I not hearken to anything that comes from 
such a source ? 



god's message to the young. 25 

Thy providence has now brought into my hands 
a book whose object is to impress upon persons of 
my years the obligation of an early devotion to 
Thee. I have derived too little advantage from 
the means of instruction which I have hitherto en- 
joyed. Shall this too fail of its end ? Grant me, 
oh, grant me, for Christ's sake, Thy grace, that I 
may read to my profit what is now before me, and 
let not the lines and pages which my eyes are now 
to trace appear to my condemnation in the last day, 
or live in my memory, in another world, only to 
add to the regrets of a ruined immortality. 



2* 



26 GOD'S message TO THE YOUNG. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE YOUNG, BY REASON OF NATURAL DEPRAVITY, 
ARE PRONE TO FORGET THEIR CREATOR, AND TO 
FORGET HIM MORE AND MORE. THIS FACT IT- 
SELF INDICATES THE NECESSITY OF EARLY PIETY, 
AND GIVES OCCASION FOR THE DIVINE MESSAGE 
ON THE SUBJECT. 

That there is a tendency, on the part even of 
the youngest, to forgetfulness and neglect of God, 
is implied in the very injunction to remember Him. 
And who of us, alas ! does not know this fact, full 
well, from all his observation and experience ? 

We may grant that no one, who has been taught 
the existence of a Creator, can absolutely lose the 
memory of such a being, This great truth, once 
impressed upon any mind, can never, perhaps, be 
entirely effaced. But we may, nevertheless, put 
Him in a great measure out of our thoughts, and 
live as if we knew or remembered nothing of Him. 
The person who has received a benefit will hardly 
lose altogether the recollection of his benefactor's 
name and existence, but he may cease to bear in 
mind what he owes him. The child cannot forget 
what he once knew of his parent, but he may ne- 
glect to cherish an affectionate and dutiful remem- 



GOD'S message to the young. 27 

brance of that parent. This is the forgetfulness of 
the heart. 

The same thing holds of us in regard to the great 
Creator and Father of us all. The larger part of 
His creatures in this wicked world do actually live 
in practical forgetfulness of Him. The greater part 
of the time He is wholly absent from their thoughts. 
When they do think of Him, it is only when cir- 
cumstances force reflection upon them. They ba- 
nish the idea as quickly as they can, and actually 
live, the most of their lives on earth, with no more 
regard to Him than if He had not even an exist- 
ence, or they owed Him no duty whatever. Truly, 
" God is not in all their thoughts." 

It is not necessary to suppose that the youthful, 
as a class, are more prone than others to such 
dereliction. The contrary is the fact. They are 
generally more alive to religious impressions, and 
more thoughtful of their duty to God, than older 
persons. But it is true, at the same time, that 
they, in common with others, are liable to the dan- 
ger and sin of putting away, from their minds and 
hearts, the proper remembrance of Him who made 
them. 

He is a purely spiritual being. He is absent 
from our senses. He can be apprehended only by 
the mind ; and under the ordinary circumstances of 
life, it seems even to require an effort of thought to 
bring Him present to us. It is, therefore, generally 
within our power, in thought and feeling, to ex- 
clude Him from us. And this is just what circum- 
stances around us would incline us to do, from the 



28 god's message to the youkg. 

very outset of life. We draw our first breath, as 
our last, in a world that is unmindful of its God. 
The atmosphere of our present existence is one of 
stupid and horrid oblivion of the grand, glorious, 
transcendent, central idea of Jehovah's existence. 
The most of those by whom we are surrounded, 
through life, are almost wholly thoughtless of their 
Creator. This is sometimes, unhappily, too true 
even of parents, teachers, and those friends, of supe- 
rior age, from whom the young person might look 
for something better, and under whose influence 
the first years of life are spent. 

But a stronger cause of the evil lies within us. 
The dearest boy, the loveliest girl, is the heir of a 
fallen nature, which is averse to God and holiness. 
Even the infant's bosom is the casket of a broken 
and marred jewel. If, with our young people, there 
is more of what we call the inclination towards reli- 
gion, it is but too true that there is a stronger incli- 
nation in the opposite direction, and that the incli- 
nation supposed, of the right kind, is only a less 
strong disinclination to that which is good. Some 
of the better thoughts and feelings, under the influ- 
ence of a yet tender conscience, may indeed tend 
towards God and duty, but the general current of 
feeling runs, and runs but too powerfully, the other 
way. 

Nor is it merely as a thing possible, or something 
to be apprehended, that the youthful are warned of 
forgetting their God. Even with them it is mourn- 
fully a matter of fact. It is their sin, their crime, 
that they have already, even so early in life, to a 



god's message to the young. 29 

great extent, forgotten their Maker. It is what 
every one of them, that has not had experience of 
the new birth, is actually doing every day. 

And while I am ready to admit that the mind in 
early years is more sensible to the impressions of reli- 
gion, and less under the power of opposing influences 
than it generally is at any after period, yet there 
are circumstances attending our youthful life, which 
operate somewhat peculiarly to lead the heart into 
forgetfulness of God. The young are more alive 
than older persons to the power of outward and 
sensible objects. Their appetites and passions are 
strong. They are generally more heedless and rash 
than persons of more mature age. They are social 
in their feelings and very sensitive to the opinions 
even of their young companions, as is often seen, in 
a remarkable degree, at college and school. The 
case of Rehoboam, as given in 2 Chron. x. 8-14, is 
but an illustration of what holds true of the young 
of both sexes everywhere, as to their influence 
over each other. Who does not know the suscepti- 
bility of the youthful mind, even to the influence of 
silent example ? 

Then, with young persons, the world possesses a 
power of attraction beyond what it has with others. 
It appears to them in unreal and illusive visions, 
which have passed away, in a measure, from the 
minds of those who have lived long enough to have 
experience of its disappointments. Who that has 
reached adult age, does not remember the beautiful 
pictures of coming life that his youthful fancy used 
to paint ? They were doomed to melt away, like 



30 god's message to the young. 

the golden isles and castles of a sun-set sky ; but it 
is by the fascination of such day-dreams that the 
world throws a spell of power over a youthful and 
sanguine mind, to draw it away from God. In this 
point of view, how true indeed that " childhood and 
youth are vanity ?" 

The young reader will perhaps ask, If, as you say, 
I am not more disposed to forget my Creator than 
other people are, why has a particular warning of such 
omission been addressed to me and not to them also ? 

I answer — and both question and answer are of 
deep importance to the inquirer — it is for the very 
reason that, while you are prone to be unmindful 
of the Father of your being, and have already be- 
gun to manifest this but too plainly, you have not 
yet gone so far astray from Him as you will have 
gone, if you live longer as you are. The tendency to 
forget Him, the danger of falling into habits of utter 
irreligion, increases with the growth of years. I shall 
say more on this point hereafter ; but let me ask, 
Have you not yourself seen how callous and reck- 
less men become as they pursue, through youth and 
adult age, the ways of impenitency ? Behold in 
them what you are likely to become ! 

But now, in the very first steps of your devious 
path, your Almighty Father comes near to you. 
He lays his hand upon you, He speaks with a pater- 
nal voice. He calls to you, to remind you of your all- 
important duties and interests, before you have too 
far lost sight of them. Would you not be admo- 
nished of being out of the right path, before you 
have wandered beyond return ? 



GOD'S message to the young. 31 

" The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God " (Ps. xiv. 1). 

" The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not 
seek after God ; God is not in all his thoughts " (Ps. x. 4). 

" The nations that forget God " (Ps. ix. 11). 

" Ye that forget God " (Ps. 1. 22). 

"And forgettest the Lord thy Maker" (Isa. li. 13). 

11 Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast 
forgotten God that formed thee " (Deut. xxxii. 18). 

" Thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not 
been mindful of the Rock of thy strength " (Isa. xvii. 10). 

" They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters " (Jer. 
ii. 13). 

" Take heed, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbe- 
lief, in departing from the living God " (Heb. hi. 12). 



THE YOUNG READER'S CANDID ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
OF THE IMPORTANT TRUTH STATED IN THIS CHAP- 
TER. 

This is truly a serious view of my case, and one 
that I have hardly apprehended before. That I am 
already in a divergent path, an alien from God, 
a wanderer and prone to wander still more — the 
heart dislikes to acknowledge this to be true ; but I 
have the evidence of it too palpable within myself. 
My Creator has been exiled from a place in my 
heart. Excepting a few intervals when conscience 
and right feeling seemed to assert their power, I 
have been willing, nay, more than willing, to exclude 
all thought of Him. Even where I have attended 
upon religious duties, in outward form, I have done 
it under the leadings of conscience and religious 
education, and not because my heart was in these 
things. Indeed they have been rather a task than 



32 god's message to the young. 

otherwise. I have not taken delight in prayer, in 
praise, in the service of God. 

And this distaste, and my consequent neglects, 
are growing upon me. It is too true that I am dis- 
posed to put my Maker away from my thoughts, 
and to do this continually, more and more. How 
timely and appropriate therefore the call to remem- 
ber him " in the days of my youth." 

Does He come to meet me as I w r ander from 
Him? Do I hear His own voice addressing me 
and saying in tender accents, Son, daughter, for- 
get not Him that made thee ? And shall not all 
the deference of which my soul is capable, be paid 
to such majesty and love ? The call so often made 
and in so many w r ays before, seems to be renewed in 
the perusal of this volume of monitions on youthful 
piety. Shall that call be now repeated in vain ? 
Shall I harden my heart and thus afford a new illus- 
tration of the tendencies already so apparent in me 
to forget the Great and Blessed One w T hose creature 
I am, and to whom, above all persons and objects, 
the earliest thoughts and affections of my heart 
should tend ? 



god's message to the young. 33 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PRECEPT OF ECCL. XII. 1, COMPREHENDS IN ITS 
IMPORT THE FULL DEVOTION OF THE HEART TO 
GOD ; AND EVERY REASON THAT HOLDS AT ALL IN 
FAVOR OF RELIGION WOULD GO TO ENFORCE THE 
OBLIGATION OF EARLY PIETY. 

I have thus far had reference, in all that I have 
said, to the divine message contained in Eccl. xii. 1, 
and I shall have occasion to refer to it throughout 
the succeeding pages. I wish that my young readers 
and myself should have this inspired precept before 
our eyes, all the way, as we proceed. 

It will hardly be necessary, especially after what 
has been said in the last chapter, that I should spend 
many words in showing what it enjoins. Even the 
most juvenile reader of the Bible probably under- 
stood, upon his first reading of the passage, that 
what is there inculcated is not a mere intellectual 
remembrance of the Being who made us ; such a 
remembrance as consists in spending an occasional 
thought upon Him ; or in indulging a sentimental 
and poetical admiration of Him, as He appears in 
creation ; or in showing Him only outward reve- 
rence in acts of worship. All of these, as the 
youngest of my readers knows, may be practised 



34 GOD'S message to the young. 

by the most irreligious and even profane per- 
sons. 

It is the remembrance of the heart which God re- 
quires of us, in and from our early years ; that kind 
of remembrance, affectionate, dutiful, habitual, 
which we cherish of those whom we love and revere, 
and whom we desire to please and honor. 

Nor do I need to take much pains to show the 
young reader of these pages, that such a remem- 
brance of our Creator cannot take place except in 
a regenerate heart. It exists perfectly and constant- 
ly, in the bosoms of angels and all unfallen crea- 
tures. It is their spontaneous habit. With them 
the love of God is inborn. By nature they are re- 
ligious beings, and that in the utmost degree. Con- 
version and regeneration are not known in the 
heavenly world, because its inhabitants have no 
need of any change of their affections. To think of 
God with love and delight is as natural to them as 
to us it is to breathe. But in our case, alas ! it is 
but too different. True religion, which consists in 
the devotion of the heart to God, is not natural to 
depraved creatures, such as we are. It has been 
lost in the fall of our race. The youngest and most 
seemingly innocent person has occasion to know 
this but too well, not merely from the teachings of 
his Bible and catechism, but from the study of his 
own heart. True piety or godliness, therefore, has 
to be restored to every human soul. How this is 
brought about, my young friends scarcely need to 
be told. Every child, in a country like ours, has 
been taught the simple but glorious " way of salva- 



god's message to the young. 35 

tion " for sinners. Through the offering which our 
blessed Saviour has made of Himself for us, we ob- 
tain not only the pardon of our sins, but the gift of 
the Holy Spirit, to renew our fallen nature and form 
us to the love, communion, and service of God. 

The duty, therefore, of remembering our Creator 
involves the duties of repentance for sin, and of trust 
in the merits of a Saviour. It implies the necessity 
of regeneration, or a change wrought in our hearts 
by the power of the Holy Spirit, from sin to holi- 
ness, from aversion and neglect to the filial love and 
fear of God. Need I tell you that, without this 
change, we can never entertain proper thoughts of 
Him who made us ; and when once it has been ex- 
perienced, then we begin to think of Him and feel 
towards him as we ought. Then our pleasure falls 
in with our duty. Then His name, as the most 
loved and honored, dwells and rules in our hearts. 
Then it becomes our delight to think of Him, as our 
" Creator," our Preserver, our Benefactor, our Sov- 
ereign, our Almighty, All- wise, All-good Father and 
Friend. 

Piety — youthful piety — is the high duty enjoined 
on all, in the precept which bids us " remember our 
Creator in the days of our youth." And can the 
practice of piety begin too soon ? Is it not appro- 
priate that it should begin with our existence ? Are 
not the obligations of religion binding alike upon 
the old and the young? Can any one wish to leave 
out, from the number of the pious, the most nume- 
rous class of mankind, and at the most important 
period of their existence ? Are our dear young 



36 GOD'S message to the young. 

people themselves willing to be thus left out, and 
stand in the ranks of the ungodly, till they cease to 
be young ? Is not religion in all respects as impor- 
tant and valuable to them as it is to any class of people 
whatever ? Is it not indeed that which, first of all 
and most of all, they do need, even while they are 
in early childhood, and yet, as it were, upon the 
threshold of life ? 

So far from having less weight, the considerations, 
whether of duty or of benefit, w T hich would lead 
any person to a life of piety, have augmented force 
when they are applied to the case of one who is 
under adult age. This we shall have occasion to 
see, in the subsequent part of this book ; while we 
shall also see that there are some independent and 
peculiar motives to youthful piety. 

But let me here ask, do the young stand in less 
need of salvation, in less need of renewing and sav- 
ing grace than other portions of our sinful race ? 
And why should not every lad and every maiden, 
in the family and school circle, be a follower of 
Christ and a child of God ? May not the heart 
even of the little child be so renewed by the Holy 
Spirit that, as the sun-flower to the sun, it shall al- 
ways incline towards God, in affectionate and obe- 
dient remembrance ? This was evidently true of 
John the Baptist, and probably of the prophet 
Samuel, as it has also been of some most eminently 
holy persons of later days. Some examples of the 
kind will be mentioned in one of the following chap- 
ters of this book. 

But why should not even the child, that numbers 



god's message to the young. 37 

only his quarter or half score of years, if he be but 
able to comprehend the idea of his fallen and sinful 
state, and of a Saviour dying in his behalf, be sup- 
posed capable of intelligent conversion ? Why 
may he not begin to exercise love, reverence, grati- 
tude, trust, obedience, towards his Saviour and his 
God, just as soon as he entertains them towards his 
earthly parents ? The learned and pious commen- 
tator and preacher, Dr. A. Clarke — referring to a 
period of his childhood, in which, at six years of age, 
and many years previous to his conversion, his mind 
had been greatly under the power of religious truth 
— said, " Had I had any person to point out the 
4 Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the 
world,' I believe that I should then have been found 
as capable of repentance and faith, my youth and 
circumstances considered, as I ever was afterwards." 

There are many, very many of those who have 
been converted after they passed the years of child- 
hood, who, from their own consciences, could make 
a similar declaration. 

And as to that large mass of young people who 
stand between early childhood and adult years, how 
many of them have their minds stored with the 
wealth of scripture knowledge, gained in the family 
and the sabbath school, and are just as well inform- 
ed on the great points of saving truth as they can 
ever be in an unrenewed state — far better informed, 
I might say, than the great mass of persons around 
them that are scores of years beyond their age ! 
What more is needed, but that there should be a 
sanctified use of this acquired knowledge — that 



38 god's message to the young. 

the seed should be caused to fructify — that they 
should begin to act upon what they have learned — 
that they should follow the light which has been so 
fully shed upon their path ? 

And a solemn question it is for parents, teachers, 
and young people themselves to ponder, if our chil- 
dren and youth are not the children of God, what 
are they ? 

I know indeed that parents and adult friends are 
apt to think of these young persons as going through 
a sort of preparation, under religious instruction and 
in the use of present means, to become Christians at 
more mature age. Nor can it be denied that it is 
better, far better, that they should be under such 
means and influences than be without them. Facts 
show that there is much more hope of conversion in 
the case of a person who enjoys such advantages in 
early years, along with the prayers of pious friends, 
than of one who does not. And most of those who 
are thus favored with youthful privileges, where 
they are brought to Christ at all, are actually con- 
verted before they pass to the years of manhood and 
womanhood. But how many of them, alas ! disap- 
point our hopes when the season comes for the ex- 
pected fruit ! And even should the development of 
Christian character be the happier result with these 
young members of our families, schools, and commu- 
nities, when they arrive at maturity, or at the very 
last years of juvenile life, will this, I ask, be the ful- 
filling of the precept to "remember their Creator in 
the days of their youth ?" 

And I repeat the fearful interrogatory, where do 



god's message to the young. 39 

these loved young ones stand in the 'meantime ? Is 
there middle ground, between religion and irreli- 
gion, for any descendant of Adam, whether old or 
young, to occupy ? If our sons and daughters are 
not, by a fully formed piety, on the side of God, 
during that most important period of human life, 
from three or five to fifteen or seventeen years of 
age, what is their true character and proper designa- 
tion ? Alas ! how many hopes of good to the church 
and the world may be blasted in the bud, by the 
neglect of early cultivation ! How much of the fruit 
is probably lost, by our being satisfied merely with 
the blossom ! And in how many cases may it be, 
where it ought not to be, that parents and surviving 
friends are called to weep at youthful graves, in dark 
uncertainty and fear, or — what is no better — suffer 
the delusion of a groundless hope of salvation, for 
loved young ones that are gone ! 

And here, at the outset, let me exhort every 
young friend w r ho takes up this book, to pause and 
make for himself the inquiry which I have suggested. 
Have you obtained " the one thing needful ?" Have 
you chosen that good part w r hich shall never be 
taken away from you? Have you been enriched 
by possessing the "goodly pearl of great price?" 
What would become of you if you should die as you 
now are ? 

"Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace" (Job 

xxii. 21). 

" Delight thyself also in the Lord " (Ps. xxxvii. 4.) 

" "We will remember the name of the Lord our God " (Ps. 

xx. 1). 



40 gob's message to the young. 

11 Therefore will I remember thee " (Ps. xlii. 6). 

" I have set the Lord always before me " (Ps. xvi. 8). 

" I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the 
night watches " (Ps. lxiii. 6). 

" My meditation of Him shall be sweet, I will be glad in the 
Lord " (Ps. civ. 34). 

" The desire of our soul is to thy name and to the remembrance 
of thee " (Is. xxvi. 8). 

" Search me, G-od, and know my heart " (Ps. cxxxix. 23). 



THE YOUNG READER'S PERSONAL EXAMINATION OF THE 
QUESTION PROPOSED IN THE CONCLUSION OF THE 
PRECEDING CHAPTER. 

A child of God or not ? A friend or an enemy ? 
Forgiven or unforgiven ? A question truly of deep 
interest to me! Strange to say, my pious friends 
have scarce ever urged it directly upon me, yet 
what question half so important ? How fearful the 
thoughts suggested by the mere possibility of my 
not being one of God's people ! Where do I stand, 
w T hither am I going, if I am not on that side ? My 
Bible teaches me that there are but two classes, that 
there is no neutral ground, that there is no middle 
path to travel. 

I have been taught, from my earliest years, that I 
have a fallen and corrupt nature, incapable in itself 
of good, and prone continually to evil ; and my own 
consciousness declares this to be true. Has this de- 
praved nature ever been renewed ? What evidence 
have I of such a change ? Do I love God ? Does 
it afford me pleasure to think of IJini, to hqld con- 
verse with Him in prayer ? to praise, honor, serve 



god's message to the young. 41 

Him ? This is the way that all the holy angels, and 
all God's true people here on earth, feel and act. 
And if I have never experienced renewing grace, 
what can I be but a " child of wrath " and an heir 
of perdition ? 

And how important, above all things, for me to 
see the true state of the cage J 

Father of all mercies ! Father of my spirit ! de- 
cide this case for me, not in thy mind only, but in 
my own. Let me see it as Thou seest it. Let me 
truly, fully know what I am. If I am yet in an im- 
penitent, unreconciled state, make me properly con- 
scious of the fact. Let my thoughts now be turned 
to a right consideration of my condition. And to 
this end, I pray, in the name of Him through whom 
all grace is given, that Thou wouldst impart to me 
the teachings of that Spirit, whose office it is saving- 
ly to enlighten the soul. 



42 god's message to the young. 



CHAPTER IV. 

EARLY PIETY IS OBVIOUSLY AND IN THE HIGHEST 
DEGREE OBLIGATORY, FROM THE VERY RIGHT 
WHICH GOD HAS IN US, AS OUR CREATOR AND 
REDEEMER, FROM THE BEGINNING OF OUR EXIST- 
ENCE. 

How came I to have my being ? Did I produce 
myself? Who endowed me with the high faculties 
of my nature ? What power but that of the Al- 
mighty could have given me any of them ? 

When once these questions have been answered, 
need it be asked where the right of property in us 
and of control over us resides ? That right of our 
Creator precedes, includes, and is superior to every 
right, actual or imaginable, that any human being 
can have in us, or we in ourselves. Does my young 
reader deny this or even doubt it ? Every under- 
standing assents to the truth, It is only the heart 
that is reluctant to acknowledge it. And if we 
have been so created and endowed by a being of 
infinite intelligence, it was surely not without some 
end in view. What was that end — what could it 
be, " but to glorify and enjoy Him," both in time 
and in eternity? You and I, my young friend, 



god's message to the young. 43 

have our existence for precisely the same end for 
which angels have theirs. Our Creator holds in us 
an equal right with that which he holds in them ; 
for he is no more the author of their being than of 
ours. And this right covers our whole existence. 
"Not a moment of it can be subtracted, the earliest 
or the latest. Those that are yet in early life are 
just as much bound to His love and service as any 
that are older. How, in fact, if he designs our life 
in this world to be spent in his service at all, could 
He make an exception of the best part of it ? Do 
you wish to make it in your own case ? 

And is this an obligation which we should be, for 
a moment, unwilling or reluctant to acknowledge, 
in heart as well as in understanding ? That great 
Author of all, is he not worthy of what he claims of 
you ? Is not infinite excellence infinitely deserving 
in itself, of your love and veneration ? And do not 
the boundless love and mercy of God to the human 
family in general, and to you as an individual, 
claim your whole heart ? Would anything less 
than the whole heart and the whole life be a fit 
return ? What blessing, oh young friend, of all the 
numberless blessings that crowd the hours and mo- 
ments of your life, has not come from Him, and is 
not stamped with the seal of His love ? And will 
you, can you, live upon your Creator's bounties, and 
not remember the hand that bestows them,— revel 
in the joyousness of youth's bright hours, and not 
think of Him who has opened to you all the foun- 
tains of your enjoyment ? " If," says Lord Chat- 
ham, writing to his son, " gratitude be due to earthly 



44 god's message to the young. 

parents and benefactors, how much more of it do 
we owe to that great Being who gives us even these 
parents and Mends !" 

But if, for temporal benefits, our debt exceeds all 
that words can express or thought conceive, how 
much is due for spiritual blessings ! Here is a mo- 
tive which angels do not feel — a tie to bind us which 
has never been thrown around them. ISTot only has 
the Father of all given you natural life ; but, in the 
gospel which brings the offers of salvation " without 
money and without price " to every sinner, He 
may be said to have given you back, in some sense, 
that life of holiness and happiness which, by a cor- 
rupt nature and sinful practice, you have lost. Not 
only has He created you, but He holds you up, 
every hour, from death and hell, and has provided 
for your restoration to Himself and your recovery of 
all the felicities, and more than all, that our first 
forefather and we have parted with. This has been 
done by the substitution of One who is so infinitely 
great and worthy, that His death answers to God's 
holy and inviolable law for the punishment of any 
and every offender, who is willing, in humble peni- 
tence and faith, to receive the benefit. 

And can a young and susceptible heart be insen- 
sible to these compassions of a Heavenly Father — 
this suffering, dying love of a divine Redeemer ? 
How truly, how entirely, above any other obliga- 
tion that can bind us, do we belong to God, in view 
of what He has done for us, not only as our Creator 
and Benefactor, but as our atoning Saviour ! The 
obligation seems like one infinite added to another. 



god's message to the young. 45 

And when once a claim so high and paramount is 
admitted, what further arguments do I need to use ? 
Is it not enough to know, of anything that is pro- 
posed to us, that it is our duty, — most of all where 
it has reference to the God who made us ? Do not 
your own conscience and heart, with all their voices, 
approve the conduct of Joseph, of Moses, the young 
Jews of the captivity at Babylon, and of all the 
prophets, apostles, martyrs, and saints of God in 
different ages who, in like manner, have preferred 
to suffer poverty and shame, imprisonment, exile, 
death itself, rather than fail of their duty to God ? 
Does He claim anything less of you than of them ? 
Do you owe Him any less ? 

And if our Creator has such a right in us and in 
all His creatures, that right can never, even for a 
moment, be set aside. It is perfect, eternal, unal- 
terable. To speak therefore of putting off religion, 
even for a time, is just as absurd as to speak of put- 
ting off the duty of loving our parents, our bene- 
factors, our country, or of postponing the duties of 
truth, honesty, and justice. These are things the 
obligation of which, from its very nature, lies upon 
us always, and as much at one time as another. 
Just so in the matter which we are now consider- 
ing — the obligation to love and honor our Creator 
is one that can never be shaken off — never for a 
moment be neglected without guilt. If you can 
shift off your duty to God, if you are at liberty to 
defer it, every creature of God in heaven and on 
earth may use the same license. If you may put off 
religion, then every Christian on earth, every angel 



46 god's message to the young. 

in glory, may leave it off and cease from serving 
God. What would you think of their so doing ? 
Does not the thought of it strike you with a kind 
of horror ? And do you suppose that you ought to 
regard your own present course, if it is one of irre- 
ligion, with any less of such horror ? 

But how often, where the conscience fully ac- 
knowledges duty in the case, are young persons, 
among their thoughtless companions at school and 
elsewhere, kept, by a kind of shame and timidity, 
at a distance from God ? Is this your temptation, 
beloved youth ? Does the fear of derision or aliena- 
tion, on the part of those around you, hold you 
back from owning your obligations to the God that 
made you and the Saviour that died for you ? Re- 
member the words of that Saviour Himself: "Who- 
soever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my 
w r ords, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, 
when he cometh in the glory of *his Father, with 
the holy angels." Would you blush to own your 
earthly parents and benefactors, your country, your 
right opinions on any other subject, or your espousal 
of any other good and honorable cause ? Will 
you then be ashamed of that which last and least 
you ought ever to be ashamed of, namely, of your 
duty to your Maker ? What ! a poor worm of the 
dust ashamed of the infinite Jehovah ? Ashamed 
of infinite purity and love ? Rather, ten thousand 
times, let us count it our disgrace and infamy that 
we should, for one moment, think of neglecting and 
dishonoring Him who is the centre, the sum, the 
source of all that is excellent, and from whose con- 



god's message to the young. 47 

descension and love we derive all of present and 
past fruition, and all our hopes of good for coming 
time and eternity, 

" The Lord hath made all things for himself " (Pro v. xvi. 4). 

" He is our God; and we are the people of his pasture and 
the sheep of his hand " (Ps. xcv. 7). 

" All souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul 
of the son is mine " (Ez. xviil 4). 

"Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things!' 1 
(Rom. xL 36). 

" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy might " (Matt. xxii. 37). 

" Whose I am " (Acts, xxvii. 23). 

u Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price : there- 
fore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are 
God's" (lCor. vL20). 

"Young men, and maidens; old men, and children: let them 
praise the name of the Lord" (Ps. cxlviii. 12, 13). 

" All people will walk, every one in the name of his God, and 
we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and 
ever " (Mic. iv. 5). 



PRAYER. 

O Thou, who hast made me, and made me what 
I am, I acknowledge Thy everlasting right in me. 

Thou hast endowed me with all my powers of 
body and mind; Thou hast given me all that I 
possess or enjoy in this life ; Thou art, in Thyself, 
infinitely worthy of all the love, the reverence, the 
service that I can ever render Thee ; and, as I am 
clearly taught in Thy word, Thou hast formed me 
for thine own glory. Shall I be unmindful of the 



48 god's message to the young. 

great source of my being ? Shall I live from day 
to day as if He did not even exist ? 

Thy mercy binds still other cords around me. Thy 
ceaseless and ineffable goodness to me, through my 
youthful years thus far, does it not demand of me 
all that I can ever render of thankfulness and love ? 
Shall I not remember Him who has ever remem- 
bered me in such fatherly kindness ? Shall I give 
a place in my inmost heart to my parents and other 
benefactors, and banish altogether from my affec- 
tions and thoughts my Heavenly Father, my bene- 
factor of benefactors ? 

And shall I suffer fear or shame to separate me 
from my duty and my best interests ? How false 
a shame — how mean and wicked a cowardice ! 
No, rather let me, when I am tempted to deviate 
from my duty to Him, feel as did the pious youth 
of old, when he was tempted : " How can I do this 
great wickedness and sin against God?" Let me, 
after the example of another young servant of God, 
" esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than 
" any treasures," and " choose rather to suffer af- 
" friction with the people of God than to enjoy the 
" pleasures of sin for a season" (Heb. xi. 25, 26). 

And can my heart resist the power of redeeming 
mercy and dying love ? The Lord of glory in hu- 
man form, weeping, bleeding, expiring for me 1 

Oh ! the sweet wonders of that cross, 
Where G-od the Saviour loved and died ! 

Truly I am " not my own ;" I am " bought with a 



GOD'S message to the young. 49 

price," I am doubly and more than doubly the Lord's, 
as being His by creation and preservation, and His 
by the ransoming love of the Saviour Son, which 
holds me up from hell and opens to me the gates of 
everlasting glory. May I be thine, too, oh my great 
and adorable Creator, by the renewing power of 
the Spirit, which shall awaken in me Thy love, 
change me to Thine image, and fit me for that high 
destiny for which Thou hast formed me. And then 
I shall remember Thee, and delight to remember 
Thee, in and from the days of youth, as my Father, 
Saviour, Sanctifier. 



3* 



50 god's message to the young. 



CHAPTER V. 

EARLY PIETY IS PRESCRIBED BY GOD'S COUNSEL AND 
COMMAND. 

Scarcely any young person, especially of those 
that have been well instructed in the truths of the 
Bible, will for a moment dispute the general obli- 
gations of religion. " I must some time or other 
be a Christian," is the voice that speaks in almost 
every youthful bosom. In some it speaks frequently 
and solemnly. You agree then that your heart and 
life must, some day, be brought under the power 
of religion. 

The question then comes — and it is one of im- 
mense interest, as it relates to so great a concern — 
what is the proper time for a life of piety to begin ? 
This question God Himself has decided, in the in- 
junction to "remember Him in" our early days. 
And need I argue with any intelligent young 
person, to show that where He gives His judgment 
on any subject, there can be no mistake ? Does He 
ever, is it possible that He ever should, exact of 
His creatures anything that is not good for them, 
and good in the highest degree ? And when He 
indicates to you or me the time for doing any duty, 
or discharging any service to Him, is not that the 



god's message to the young. 51 

proper, the only proper time for it ? What does 
He say then on the question now before us ? " Re- 
member thy Creator," — when ? how early or late 
in life ? " Now, in the days of thy youth." And 
the very passage of Scripture which contains this 
precept — forewarning you as it does in language so 
pathetic and beautiful, of " the evil days" to come 
— clearly shows that your Maker makes this require- 
ment on the ground, not merely of your duty to 
Him, but of His regard for your own highest inter- 
ests and happiness. And where we have his opinion 
on any subject, what other reason or motive do we 
want ? How entirely does this settle every ques- 
tion ! How utterly unfounded, and false, and per- 
nicious are all our opinions, or those of our fellow- 
creatures, where they go counter to His ! And can 
you dare to set up your mind against His ? And 
if, when we speak of religion, we mean the love and 
service of God on earth, and a course of preparation 
for His everlasting service and communion in hea- 
ven, then who can better' choose, who but He shall 
choose for us, the time to learn and practise it ? Do 
the world and Satan insinuate the persuasion — does 
your own heart too readily agree to it — that the . 
duties of religion ought to be, or may better or as 
well be laid aside, under the expectation of a more 
suitable time yet to come ? He who made you, and 
to whom all the duties of religion are due, declares 
the very opposite of this, and His decision of the 
case must weigh down all opposing reasons, and 
opinions, and pretexts, as a mountain in the scale 
against a feather* 



52 gob's message to the youxg. 

Do you not value the advice of an earthly parent 
or friend, resting on it sometimes almost as im- 
plicitly as if you had no mind, no will of your own — 
submitting to it without a word of dissent, and even 
rejoicing, it may be, that you have such a counsellor 
to decide for you ? How much rather shall you not 
confide in and submit to the opinion of the all-good 
and all-wise Father of your spirit, where He gives 
advice ? Who but He is competent to decide in so 
momentous a case ? 

But the message of God which enjoins early piety 
is not merely advisory. It speaks in the language of 
command as well as of counsel. It is authoritative 
and peremptory, and comes to every youthful eye 
and ear, invested with the sanctions of divine majesty 
and almighty power. Who shall dare refuse obedi- 
ence where such a voice is heard to speak ? And 
mark the language. It is not merely " Remember, 
— remember in the days of thy youth." As if even 
this were not enough, an emphatic " now " is added ; 
"remember now," not in the future, but the present 
of your juvenile life, and through all its days ; the 
earliest and the latest, no exception is made, no post- 
ponement permitted. The demand is one of imme- 
diate and perpetual obedience. Can you make up 
your mind to live on through all your youthful days 
in disregard of it ? What angel would not tremble 
at the thought of disobeying Him in the smallest 
particular, or of incurring His displeasure even for 
a moment? And will you, can you, oh youthful 
reader ! endowed as you are with a mind to reflect 
and a heart to feel, — will you, can you, for any ob- 



GOD'S message to the young. 53 

ject that the world, or the tempter, or your own de- 
pravity can suggest, venture upon a course of de- 
liberate, and continued, and bold resistance and re- 
bellion against Him who holds your very breath in 
His hands, and who has laid such a mandate upon 
you ? How know you but that He may cut short 
your life itself, in the midst of that career of youth- 
ful and wilful forgetfulness of Him ? Better, ten 
thousand times better, to sacrifice all earthly good, 
to suffer sickness, sorrow, shame and persecution, 
die in penury and rags, perish on the scaffold or at 
the- stake, than to live day by day, even in this 
world, under the displeasure of such a being. Better, 
ten thousand times better all this, than even to en- 
counter a moment's risk of falling under His ever- 
lasting frown and curse. Will you be guilty of so 
mad and desperate a temerity ? 

"God only wise" (Eom. xvi. 21, and 1 Tim. i. 11). 

"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of G-od " (James 
i. 5). 

"And unto man he said, behold the fear of the Lord, that is 
wisdom " (Job. xxviii. 28). 

11 Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel " (Ps. lxxiii. 24). 

" I will instruct thee, and teach thee in the way which thou 
shalt go : I will guide thee with mine eye " (Ps. xxxii. 8). 

" Who would not fear thee, King of nations ?" (Jer. x. 7). 

"We ought to obey God rather than men " (Acts v. 29). 

" I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear : Fear Him, which 
after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell " (Luke xii 5). 

" Much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him 
that speaketh from heaven " (Heb. xii. 25). 

" It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God 
(Heb. x. 31). 



54 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

" Shall we not be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and 
live?" (Heb.xii. 9). 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER. 

And has the Most High addressed me in words of 
counsel and command? Do I hear the voice of 
unerring wisdom uttering its oracles, and the voice 
of infinite majesty and power proclaiming its au- 
thority? And shall I spurn the one, or dare to 
defy the other ? 

Shall I reject the teachings of infallible truth ? 
Shall I not rather count it my privilege, my honor, 
my happiness, to have the counsels of a monitor 
who knows all things in regard to me, in the future 
as in the present, and who is acquainted as I cannot 
be, with the term of my years on earth, and the 
dangers and value of my soul ! Who but my Hea- 
venly Father shall decide for me the question as to 
the time at which I must begin to love and serve 
Him ? And shall I be guilty of the folly and wick- 
edness of setting at naught the authority of Him 
who has given me my very existence, and one word 
of whose power could consign me in a moment to 
death and perdition? What is anything, every- 
thing, that I possess or enjoy, if possessed or en- 
joyed without his benediction ? " His favor is life," 
" His loving-kindness is better than life.?' And oh, 
the dreadful possibility of having the weight of 
almighty power to fall upon me in wrath and ven- 
geance — even the passing thought of it casts dark 



god's message to the young. 55 

shadows over my mind ! How then could I bear 
the tremendous reality ? 

But let me from filial reverence and affection 
rather than from slavish fear, obey Him who is 
almighty in the execution of His justice, and al- 
mighty too in the fulfilment of His love and mercy. 
Let me with young Samuel say : " Speak, Lord, for 
thy servant heareth." And then shall I know, in 
the felicity of my own experience, what the power 
and benignity of such a Being can do for those who 
love and honor Him. 

Father of boundless wisdom, and mercy, and 
power ! give me, for Christ's sake, a heart to receive 
the gracious counsel and obey the solemn injunction 
of Thy w r ord, to " remember Thee in the days of 
my youth." 



56 god's message to the young. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE OBLIGATIONS OF EARLY PIETY CANNOT BE DE- 
FERRED OR IN ANY WISE NEGLECTED, WITHOUT 
CONTINUAL SIN. 

This is a very serious view of the matter, and it 
is one that has probably been very little before your 
mind. But it is the true one, and you ought to 
ponder it. You value yourself, it may be, upon 
your virtuous life, and scarcely feel the conscious- 
ness of being a sinner at all. Nor would I under- 
value the morality of a youthful life free from the 
stains of vice. On the contrary, the memory of it 
will be worth more to you in future years, than all 
the fancied pleasures of those who seek enjoyment 
in immoral indulgences. 

But sin, as you can yourself most readily see, does 
not consist wholly in outward acts. Nor would you 
pretend to say that it consists merely in wrong done 
to our fellow-men. If, as we have already seen, it 
is your duty to live always in the love and service 
of your Creator, then every moment you exist, every 
breath you breathe, in an irreligious state, you are 
committing sin. 

And what, let me ask, is the reason that, even for 
a time, you put aside the claims of religion ? Why 



god's message to the young. 57 

is it that you do not choose and embrace it at once ? 
Do you not, by this very conduct, declare to your 
Maker's face that you love the world and your 
ungodly ways more than you love Him, and that, if 
you were only allowed to do so, you would always 
banish Him from your heart ? 

He calls to you and every young person to remem- 
ber Him "now." But in every act and every mo- 
ment of your life you say to Him : I will not yet pay 
thee this regard ; I will first follow the world and 
my own passions a while. And do you consider it 
a small offence to treat Him thus ? What would 
you think of a child who should spend whole days 
without seeking the society of his parents or speak- 
ing a word to them ? What of a person who, after 
having received the greatest imaginable favors from 
a benefactor, should never once thank him or show 
any remembrance of him ? Sins of neglect are 
sometimes the worst sins of which we are ever 
guilty. Your whole life is one continual neglect of 
God, and he looks upon you, in this light, as living 
in constant transgression. What insult and con- 
tempt do you put upon the great and illustrious 
Being who made you, by giving up the best, the 
very best, of your time, your powers, your affec- 
tions, to worldliness and sin, with the expectation of 
giving Him some of your last and most worthless 
days or hours — pouring out the richness and sweet- 
ness of the cup and offering Him its veriest drain- 
ings! 

And how can you be sinless, how can your youth- 
ful life be anything but one continual course of diso- 



58 god's message to the young. 

bedience and transgression, so long as you neglect 
the divine injunction which expressly requires of you 
to "remember Him in the days of your youth?" 
Can you even postpone without guilt where God so 
solemnly commands you not to postpone ? 

You can have no possible right of deciding in this 
matter, as to the question of duty. There is but one 
course for you to pursue. God himself has pointed 
it out; and every moment you live in neglect of 
Him, you are incurring fresh guilt and exposing 
yourself anew to the peril of everlasting death. It 
is nothing, in fact, but the aversion of a corrupt na- 
ture to God and holiness that leads you for a mo- 
ment to delay in this matter, since we never put off, 
if we can help it, anything that we take pleasure in. 
" The carnal mind is enmity against God," says the 
Bible; and this is true, too true of you, young 
though you be. 

Do you rest upon your morality ? Does it take 
away the sting of conscience ? Nicodemus was pro- 
bably a man of most irreproachable outward life ; and 
there was a certain young man that had an interview 
with our Saviour, whose morality was so blameless 
that he thought he could say of his duties to his fel- 
low-men, "All these things have I kept from my 
youth up." That young man, so amiable and inge- 
nuous that it is said " Jesus loved him," like too 
many other such young persons, knew not his own 
heart till one who knew it better probed it ; and he 
turned away from Christ, because, like you, he was 
not willing to give up all and at once ; and he pro- 
bably lost his soul, after being nearer to the Saviour 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 59 

and salvation than you, probably, have ever been ; 
for he came expressly to have a conversation about 
personal religion ; and you, it may be, have never 
gone so far as this with any minister or Christian 
friend. 

You perhaps imagine, as many do, that you have 
made no choice, taken no stand in the matter. No- 
thing can be more untrue. There is, as I have inti- 
mated, but one choice that you have any right to 
make. You have made just the opposite. You 
prefer and choose your present course of neglect and 
disobedience towards Him ; you love it, you pursue 
it, and that, too, with full knowledge of your duty 
and in defiance of His authority. Nor is this all. 
The evil of living, a creature of God, in this, God's 
world, without remembering him, does not termi- 
nate with yourself. You not only rob Him of what 
you owe Him, but encourage others to do the same, 
and thus help to rob Him also of what is due from 
them. No one can live here on earth or anywhere 
in God's creation — perhaps no one can live a single 
day, without doing in some way, some good or evil ! 
and none of us can live here long without doing a 
great deal of good or a great deal of mischief. Eve- 
ry human being, even the youngest, the poorest, the 
most ignorant, has some influence over others ; and 
there is no telling how vast a power of benefit or 
injury may emanate from one person, how much of 
it any and every one does actually exert, in a long 
course of years. 

That influence is all on the one side or the other. 
" He that is not with me is against me," " he that 



60 god's message to the young. 

gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." So long 
as you live as you now do, your influence is cast into 
the scale of irreligion. True, it may not be so 
strongly thrown on that side as if you were living in 
crime and immorality, but it is all one way, and 
that is against God. If you doubt this, let me ask 
you what would the world be, — where would be 
any true piety, any " remembrance " of the Creator, 
if every person were like you ? Do you not by your 
daily, hourly example, tell all the world around you, 
to neglect and forget Him ? Do you not preach 
this, by your life, to every young companion in the 
circle of your acquaintance ? 

There is yet one thing to be added to all that I 
have said in the present chapter. Sin, as the young- 
est reader will be able to see, is not measured 
merely by the character of our acts and our courses 
of conduct, in themselves considered, but also and to 
a very great extent, by the knowledge we have of 
our duty. A person who has not committed crimes 
in themselves by any means so heinous as those of 
another person, may yet be the greater sinner of the 
two, on account of his having been better instructed 
than the other, and brought up under circumstances 
which rendered it far more disgraceful and wicked 
for him to offend. In this point of view, you may 
be much older in sin than many around you who 
have lived through fifty or sixty years. 

Looking therefore at the subject in these lights, 
there is a most important and solemn sense in which 
you have yet to " remember " Him who gave you 
being. If you would ever gam his favor and enjoy 



god's message to the young. 61 

His love, you must know and feel your sins against 
Him and confess them before Him. You must ask, 
through Christ, His fatherly forgiveness, and seek the 
grace which will enable you, for the future, to live 
in filial mindfulness of Him. 

Your duty in this particular cannot be too strong- 
ly urged or too deeply felt. You can never be- 
come a child of God without some true convictions 
of sin. Conversion begins with repentance. In 
the case of fallen creatures like ourselves, it is the 
beginning of all religion. True penitence is the gift 
of God. It leads to Christ and salvation. 

Think therefore of your sins, your youthful sins. 
Is there need that I should have made the effort 
to convince you of them ? You have only to listen 
to the voice of your own conscience. The very fact 
that you intend to think about your religious duties 
and interests at some yet future period, is evidence 
that you are now, and have all along been, neglecting 
them. In acknowledging your obligations for the 
future, you pronounce your own condemnation for 
the past and the present. I have known very young 
persons who were as amiable and lovely as you or 
any young person can claim to be, and as insensible 
as yourself to the consciousness of sin, who, when 
death approached, felt, as one of them expressed it, 
that they " could not, could not die." And why ? 
Because in the expectation of appearing before God, 
and in the light of an approaching eternity, they 
then saw as they had not before, their whole nature 
to be depraved, and their whole lives to be wicked. 

So, youthful reader, would you look upon your- 



62 god's message to the young. 

self, were you now called to die and appear before 
your Maker. " Remember" Him therefore as the 
God and Father from whom you have departed ; 
ask of Him the gift of the Spirit, to inspire within 
you true repentance ; seek His forgiveness and favor 
through a Redeemer ; and then, when your sins are 
pardoned and your heart renewed by the Holy 
Ghost, you will be able to look up to Him, and re- 
member Him as your reconciled God and Father. 

H To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him 
it is sin" (James iv. 11). 

" God, in whose hands thy breath is and whose are all thy 
ways, hast thou not glorified " (Dan. v. 23). 

M Behold I was shapen in iniquity ; and in sin did my mother 
conceive me " (Ps. li. 5). 

u They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies " (Ps. 
lviii 3). 

" Against thee, thee only, have I sinned " (Ps. li. 4). 

" Thou makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth " (Job 
xiii. 26). 

"Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions n 
(Ps. XXV. 1). 

" The sacrifices of Grod are a broken spirit " (Ps. li. 1*7). 

" Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, 
whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy place, with 
him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit " (Is. lvii. 15). 

" Create in me a clean heart, G-od ; and renew aright spirit 
within me " (Ps. li. 10). 



PRAYER AND CONFESSION. 

O God, my Heavenly Father! I am a sinner 
against Thee. Give me to feel it as I ought ! Not 



god's message to the young. 63 

only is this true of mankind in general, but of my- 
self in particular. Though young, I am an offender, 
and doubtless a much greater one than I have as yet 
seen myself to be. How often, in the few years of 
my existence, have I done things which I knew to 
be wrong ! How often have I spoken idle and fool- 
ish words, if no worse ! How often harbored 
thoughts and feelings which no human eye could 
see, within my breast! But Thou, God, sawest 
them all. O those depths of pride, ambition, selfish- 
ness, anger, hate, envy, sensual passion — Thy holy 
and all-seeing eye flashed light into them, though 
covered from human gaze ! Many, many of these, 
the sins of my childhood and youth, are now hidden 
from my own sight, buried in the oblivion of the 
past ! But not one of them is forgotten of Thee. 
All, all are present to Thy memory. 

But, if there was nothing else against me, my 
neglect of duty to the God who made me, my want 
of a heart to remember Him and love Him — how great 
a crime ! This covers my whole life with the black- 
ness of guilt. 

What a heart have I — a heart that refuses all love 
and obedience — a heart so cold and dead to all that 
is good — how must holy angels — how must Thou 
look on me ! 

Truly, though young, I have the evidence that I 
belong to a fallen race. I am the " degenerate plant 
of a strange vine." Thou only knowest the extent 
of the power of evil within me ; and Thou only, who 
hast made me, canst form my soul anew to the im- 
age of Thy holiness. I have not loved to think of 



64 god's message to the young. 

this my sinful condition. I have rather desired to 
hide it from myself. Yet sometimes, in sickness or 
danger, or in some more than usually thoughtful hour, 
conscience speaks, and a shudder of dread comes 
over me at the thought of being called to meet my 
God. My own nature, in such an honest hour, cries 
out against me that I am a sinner. 

O Thou who art " greater than my heart and 
knowest all things," give me to know my sins be- 
times, that I may, through Him who is the Saviour 
of sinners, old and young, be preserved from plung- 
ing into greater depths of transgression, and from 
incurring Thy awful wrath and curse in an endless 
life ! 



god's message to the young. 65 



CHAPTER VII. 

EARLY PIETY IS COMMENDED TO US BY THE CONSI- 
DERATION THAT YOUTH IS THE BEST TIME FOR 
ACQUIRING ALL GOOD PRINCIPLES AND HABITS. 

The period of our childhood and youth is the 
most fit time for learning everything. "Who does 
not know this ? It may be called the learning time 
of our existence in this world. Men, to a great ex- 
tent, put in practice, in after years, just what they 
have been taught when they were children. God 
has, in fact, ordained this to be the period in which 
we are to become initiated in all the things that are 
most important to us, and to make preparation for 
after life. He has constituted our nature accordingly. 
The mind is then in a plastic state ; it readily re- 
ceives impressions, and accommodates itself to 
change, adopts new habits, forms new attachments. 
And not only is there a far higher susceptibility, but 
the impressions, the sentiments, the habits and at- 
tachments which then gain possession of it are more 
lasting, by far, than those of subsequent date. Who 
has not observed how the old man retains the re- 
membrance of things that occurred in the earliest 
dawn of life ? The most minute facts stand in his 
memory like a fadeless picture, and he will, as if 
4 



66 god's message to the young. 

reading from a book, give you every name and date 
of fifty years back, while the greatest events of yes- 
terday are forgotten. 

And so with our feelings. We usually love longest 
and best those whom we loved earliest, insomuch 
that the strength of early attachments has become 
proverbial. 

And equally true is this in respect to our princi- 
ples, our habits, and everything that constitutes 
character. So generally is it the fact, that we are 
accustomed, from what we see of a person in his 
youth, nay, in his very childhood, — to judge what 
he is to be in all his future life. 

Nor do we often judge amiss. The boy makes 
the man, the girl the woman. '* Just as the twig 
is bent the tree inclines," Hardly any truth is 
better known or more generally acted upon. It is 
for this reason that parents and teachers expend so 
much of effort in the education of the young ; for 
this, that God gathers mankind into families, and 
places us, during the growing-up period, under the 
care of persons that are older. 

Youth is the morning of life's day ; the spring 
that precedes our summer and autumn ; the seed- 
time that prepares the harvest. After-life is gene- 
rally little more than the growing time of what is 
then sown. Does it not strike the youngest of my 
readers, how reasonable and important in view of 
these truths, that they should remember their Crea- 
tor in their earliest years, and while they are learn- 
ing other important and valuable things of every 
.sort, be most intent on acquiring that which is far 



god's message to the young. 67 

above them all in its value and importance ? Why 
has a particular message on the subject been sent to 
you in your youth, but for this very reason, that 
God sees you to be, just now, at the best of all 
periods of life for learning of Him? 

But this is not all. Your heart is already getting 
its mould, one way or the other. If you have not, 
by a change of your nature, learned to love God and 
holiness, you already love and always have loved, 
the world and sin. If you have not been forming 
habits of religion, you have already begun to form 
those of an entirely opposite kind. And this is 
going on from bad to worse. Your habits, your feel- 
ings, are every day taking their impress and charac- 
ter more and more, under the influence of ungodliness. 
They are growing, as it were, into sin ; sin growing 
into them. You are educating yourself in irreligion. 
You are building up in your own soul, even while 
you are young, a strong tower, for Satan to dwell 
in and shut God out. 

How plain, that the beginning of life, its very 
beginning, is the most suitable time for the forma- 
tion of religious character, and the commencement 
of a religious course. How mistaken the idea that 
religion will come more easily, or suit us any bet- 
ter, at some later stage of life ! 

When you have a rare plant or tree to rear, do 
you not take it and set it out as young as possible ? 
Who that had a day's journey to perform, would 
be willing to lose the morning ? Who that had a 
crop to plant, would let the seed-time pass by ? 

Our boyhood — our girlhood, is the germ of future 



68 god's message to the young. 

manhood and womanhood. Our youth is life's 
morning ; it is life's, and generally eternity's seed- 
time. Even an infant's hand can turn the stream as 
it first struggles forth from the rock ; but who can 
command it after it has pursued its onward course 
and become a deep-rolling river ? 

True, divine power can accomplish the great 
saving change at any period. " All things are pos- 
sible with God." But this does not make it any 
the less true or manifest that you are now at the 
best stage of all your life for the acquisition of 
piety. 

Besides, if you do not follow up the religious 
feelings, and the convictions of conscience that you 
now have, they may leave you. Whether in greater 
or less degree, they may be all that you will ever 
have. How many persons do you see converted 
after they have passed their juvenile years, espe- 
cially if they be such as have enjoyed early religious 
advantages ? It has been ascertained that a large 
majority of those who arrive at adult age without 
piety, live and die without it. The late Dr. Bedell 
of Philadelphia, said, that in the course of twenty 
years of pastoral labor, so far as he could recollect, 
not three persons over fifty years of age had been 
brought to Christ, under his ministry. Another 
eminent minister makes the declaration : "I would 
not say that none are converted in old age, but they 
are few and far between, like scattered grapes on 
the uppermost branches, after the vintage is 
gathered." 

O then cherish, as your very life, the better 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 69 

movings of your young heart, lest you be left to 
become an example of hardened impiety, and live 
longer, only to sin more grievously, and incur a 
more awful damnation! " Remember now, there- 
fore, your Creator in the days of your youth." 

" Come, ye children, hearken unto me, I will teach yon the 
fear of the Lord " (Ps. xxxiv. 11). 

"Seek ye first the kingdom of G-od, and his righteousness " 
(Matt. vi. 33). 

"Unto man he said: Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wis- 
dom; and to depart from evil is understanding " (Job. xxviii. 28). 

" The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge " (Pro v. 
i.7). 

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom " (Psalm 
cxi. 10). 

" Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, 
and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of 
man " (Eccl. xii. 13). 

"The child shall die an hundred years old" (Isa. lxv. 20). 

" What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul?" (Matt. x. 20). 

" This is eternal life, to know God " (John xvii. 3). 

"Quench not the Spirit" (1 Thess. v. 19). 



MEDITATION AND PEAYER. 

Hast thou, O Lord, given me the days of my 
childhood and youth that I may learn useful lessons 
and prepare for future life ? Hast thou fitted my 
very nature for this important end ? And shall it 
not be fulfilled in me ? Hast thou made my young 
heart tender and open to impression so that it may 
better learn that which is good ? And shall it 



10 god's message to the young. 

not be susceptible to all that concerns my duties to 
Thee and my immortal interests ? Shall my whole 
youth be spent in the studying merely what will be 
of advantage to me in this world, and none of it be 
given to the study of those things which pertain to 
my everlasting welfare ? What is time compared 
with eternity ? And " what shall I be profited if I 
gain the whole world and lose my own soul?" 

Shall I labor to acquire everything that will make 
me pleasing and valuable to my fellow-men, and not 
labor more to gain that which will please my God 
and advance His glory ? Do I need the best teach- 
ers ? do I prefer and honor such ? do I cheerfully 
put myself under their direction ? And shall I not, 

my Father in heaven, seek Thy divine tuition, and 
learn, in this period so propitious for it, how to live 
according to thy will ? 

Be thou my teacher in my early days ; and since 

1 am taught that the fear of the Lord is the begin- 
ning of wisdom, instil that fear into my bosom. 
Give me that highest and best of all knowledge, the 
knowledge of Thyself. Let my heart begin to love 
and fear Thee while it is tender ; and leave me not to 
waste away these most precious years of my exist- 
ence, without learning what, first of all, I ought to 
learn both to understand and do. Let me not be like 
too many of those around me, who, as they grow old- 
er, depart farther and farther from Thee. Let not my 
heart become hardened in folly and siu. Let it not 
be like the neglected and uncultivated earth which 
only becomes more hard and sterile, or more fruit- 
ful of thorns and briers, the more it receives of hea- 






god's message to the young. 71 

ven's sunshine and showers. But now, while it 
possesses still the sensibilities of youth, let it receive 
saving impressions and influences. Let me not lose 
any thoughts and desires that I have about my duty 
to Thee and my soul's salvation, lest I never have 
them again. Save me, for Christ's sake, from " har- 
dening my heart." Let me not plunge into the 
depths of iniquity. " Take not thy Holy Spirit 
from me." 



12 god's message to the young. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

EARLY PIETY GENERALLY HAS MUCH MORE OF EN- 
COURAGEMENT AND AID FROM OUTWARD CIRCUM- 
STANCES THAN A PIETY FORMED IN LATER YEARS. 

The influence of persons and things around us 
upon our character and course of life, is far greater 
than Ave are apt to suppose. We are social beings. 
The opinions and example of others operate power- 
fully upon us. Indeed human character is generally 
formed in a great measure by influences from with- 
out. The woman, the man, are very much what 
they were made by the parents and teachers, or 
other persons, under whose influence they have grown 
up, and the circumstances in the midst of which 
they have lived. We can hardly tell the power of 
these social and external influences upon us in re- 
spect to what we are and what is to become of us. 
Do you hope, so far as these are concerned, that 
you are to gain anything by postponing attention to 
your spiritual duties and interests ? Do you sup- 
pose that after a while they will be on the side of 
religion and of your soul's welfare ? So far from it, 
these mighty influences will array their power more 
and more against you, the longer you live in an irre- 
ligious state. 



GOD'S message to the young. IS 

I do not say that these influences are all of them 
favorable while you are young, even in the best sup- 
posable case. Alas ! you have already had too much 
reason to know that you live in a fallen world, and 
breathe an infected atmosphere. But will the diffi- 
culties arising from these outward causes lessen by 
your delay ? They are far less now than you can 
expect them to be at any future time. They are in- 
creasing upon you every day. Satan and the world 
oppose themselves now to your becoming a Chris- 
tian. Will these enemies of your soul ever become 
less hostile ? Will they not, on the contrary, gain 
greater courage and power to work your ruin, by 
your waiting and yielding ? All the advantage 
gained by so doing, will be on their side, not yours. 
Will not your own heart all the while be growing 
more and more in love with the world and with sin, 
and less able to resist their seductions ? Who 
would hope to defend a city better after leaving its 
gates open, for months and years, to the free pas- 
sage of its enemies ? — who expect to break off in- 
temperate habits the more readily after years of 
daily drinking? 

As respects our indulgence in worldliness and sin, 
it is precisely as with the drunkard ; the more he 
drinks, the more he loves the cup, and the less able 
he becomes to put it away from him. If you delay 
in this matter, yours will be the folly not merely of the 
man who waited for the river to run by, but rather 
of one who should stand cowardly or careless all the 
day on the bank of a yet fordable stream, while he 
saw the torrent every moment swelling higher and 
4* 



74 god's message to the young. 

becoming more impassable. The flood that divides 
you from the place of safety and peace is rolling 
stronger and deeper, every moment you linger. 
Do you want proof of this ? Look around you and 
see for yourself. Do people who are not already 
Christians generally show more inclination to piety 
as they grow in years ? Comparing the two classes, 
has the aged man more religious thought and feel- 
ing than the boy ? Whence do nearly all the con- 
verts come, from the ranks of the old or the young? 
Is the progress of life, with those who are postpon- 
ing religion, a progress towards God and heaven, 
or just the reverse ? Young as you may be, you 
are old enough to give the answer. 

And, as with others, so it will be with you, if you 
continue this putting off. As years roll on, the 
cares of life will occupy your mind with an absorb- 
ing power of which you now can form little idea. 
Instead of having more, you will have less of leisure, 
by far, than you now have for reading, prayer, and 
spiritual cultivation. 

Those golden hours of youthful leisure and free- 
dom from care — how many, even of the pious, look 
back to them with a sigh ! They are fast flitting 
away from you. With your future years, reverses 
will perhaps come, poverty stare you in the face, 
and fill you with anxieties even for daily bread ; 
debts accumulate upon you and harass you day and 
night, so that you will feel that " the evil days " 
have indeed come, and that you can hardly give a 
moment or a thought to the concerns of your soul. 
And even prosperity, with its increase of property 



god's message to the young. 75 

and its expansion of worldly interests, will leave 
you less and less of leisure, and place new ob- 
stacles continually in your way back to God and 
heaven. 

You will form, every year of your life, new ac* 
quaintances, new friendships, new connexions ; and 
as these multiply, every new one will probably be a 
fresh link in the chain that already binds you to the 
world ; insomuch that, as regards the circumstances 
and influences around you, as well as your own feel- 
ings, there will not only be less probability, at any 
future time, of a change on your part to a life of pie- 
ty, but less and less probability of it every day that 
you live. Yes ! the time will probably come when, 
in adult years, your thoughts will revert to those 
very " days of youth" through which you are pass- 
ing, and you will wish you had them back again, 
and were as free as you now are, from the bonds 
which you will by that time have bound upon your- 
self, almost too strongly to be sundered. And if 
you live to those future years that you hope for — • 
live no longer than to middle age — some that would 
now help you on the way to heaven — pious parents, 
teachers, schoolmates, friends, will then be gone — 
either living far away or lying in the silent grave. 
You will not then, when perhaps you will most 
need it, have them to counsel and warn you, to pray 
for and with you, to cheer you on your Zionward 
way by their company and example. Those will 
truly be " evil days " to you whether you feel it to 
be so or not. , Oh ! you know not how much of pro- 
vidential restraint and providential help may now 



76 god's message to the young. 

be thrown around you, of which you may hereafter 
be bereft. 

There is no telling, how great a calamity may and 
oftentimes does come upon a young person, in the 
loss of godly parents or friends ; and, if you will 
not heed their counsels and tears, God may, as a 
judgment upon you, take these best of his earthly 
gifts away, and thus by His very providence, say 
of you, " He is joined to his idols, let him alone !" 

" And that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures " 
(2 Tim. hi. 15). 

" The unfeigned faith which dwelt first in thy grandmother 
Lois and thy mother Eunice " (2 Tim. i. 15). 

"After the death of Jehoida, * * * * they left the 
house of the Lord God of their fathers; * * * * and 
wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this their trespass " 
(2 Chron. xxiv. 17, 18). 

u And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all 
the days of the elders that overlived Joshua " (Josh. xxiv. 31). 

" And thou Capernaum, winch art exalted to heaven, shalt be 
thrust down to hell" (Luke x 15). 

"Whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever 
hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to 
have" (Luke viii. 18). 

" If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the 
things which belong unto thy peace " (Luke xix. 42). 



PRAYER. 

Take not from me, O my Father, who hast given 
them all to me, the privileges of my childhood and 
youth. Remember not against me my want of 



god's message to the young. 11 

gratitude for them and my past neglects to improve 
them. Let not all the sunny hours of my youthful 
leisure be wasted in worldliness and sin. Let not 
the cares of life, which I see so absorbing and con- 
suming with most of the older around me, come in 
and possess me, before I have secured Thy favor 
and the safety of my soul. Let me not be left with- 
out a renewed heart, and at the same time without 
the help of godly companionship and counsel, to 
meet the temptations of an evil world, where so 
many have lost their souls ; for if, with so much to 
favor me now, I have done nothing for my everlast- 
ing interests, what will become of me then ? 

Cast me not, as I am, O God, where Thy Sab- 
baths, Thy word, Thy name, have none to honor 
them. Leave me not, in my unchanged state, to the 
company, the example, the influence of only the 
godless. Spare my pious parents, my faithful min- 
ister and teachers, my sweet young Christian com- 
panions, and let me be one in heart with them. Let 
me not be separated from them in life, let me not bid 
them farewell on their dying beds, if they are to die 
first, until I partake of the same grace and the same 
hope with them. Let me be able to say to them, 
" Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my 
God." And so, whether in life or in death, O God, 
for Christ's sake, " gather not my soul with sinners." 



IS GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 



CHAPTER IX. 

EARLY PIETY IS THE ONLY FIT PREPARATION FOR THE 
DUTIES, TRIALS, AND DANGERS OF AFTER LIFE. 

It is the common idea of religion, I know, that it 
is something to be got or to be put on, as a matter 
of arbitrary appointment on the part of our Maker, 
or because, if necessary at all, it is necessary only to 
prepare us for a different state of being in a future 
world. Nothing can be more false than such a view. 
Existence and action in another world are only a 
continuance of our existence and action in this world. 
We shall be essentially the same beings there that 
we are here. " He that is filthy, let him be filthy 
still ; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous 
still." 

The same preparation^ therefore, which we need 
for a future and endless state of existence, is needed 
to make us what we ought to be in the present 
world. 

Religion is not something merely to be put on to 
shield us from future wrath. It ought to be a part 
of our very being. It ought to mingle with all our 
thoughts and feelings, and control all the actions of 
our lives. What is religion but love to God and to 
our fellow-creatures ? It belongs to the nature of 



god's message to the young. 19 

all celestial beings, and is its highest glory. In 
losing — as we of this world have done, in the great 
apostasy — the holiness of our nature, we have lost 
the guide and glory of our existence ; and until we 
recover it, we can never live aright. As we cannot 
end life, just as much ought we to feel that we can- 
not spend it or begin it rightly, without the love and 
fear of our Maker in our hearts. 

And who but God Himself can either direct us 
how to live, or enable us to live as we ought ? A 
regard for the will of Him who made us is the rule, 
the only right rule of human action ; and therefore 
it is religion only that can give us the proper prepa- 
ration for living in this world. That preparation 
must be obtained while we are young. We must 
take with us, when we go forth into adult life, prin- 
ciples, habits, character formed for it from childhood, 
and formed as God would have them to be. 

Without His aid you cannot even make a right 
choice of its pursuits ; you cannot discharge its 
duties, you cannot bear its trials as you ought. If 
you go forth into the world without it, you go to 
the great battle that is to decide your destinies 
without any armor on, and you will be likely to fall 
and perish. 

Why do we study and labor, through all the years 
of childhood and youth, with great expenditure of 
money, and under the most skilful masters we can 
obtain, but that Ave may, by human instruction and 
science, fit ourselves for the part which we are to act 
in future life ? How much more ought w T e, while 
young, to acquire the knowledge of God and become 



80 god's message to the young. 

imbued with His love, in order that we may live as 
we ought, and fulfil the end for which He created 
us and placed us here ! The duties of life are two- 
fold, as they have respect to God and to our fellow- 
men. How can we properly discharge those of 
either class without the guidance and help of Him 
who made us ; and what are we to expect if we go 
rashly on, in opposition to His will and counsel ? 
His word is designed to be the rule of our life in 
this world as well as the light to guide us to a bet- 
ter state. And not only are we furnished with this 
heavenly " lamp," but the divine illuminations and 
aids of the Spirit are promised also to those who 
seek them. 

Do you feel yourself to be independent of such 
help, even for this world ? Who of us can know 
the future ? Who foresee its calls of duty, its diffi- 
culties, its troubles, its perils, its end, but the God 
whose hand has launched us forth upon this state of 
being ? Who better than He — who else indeed than 
He — can anticipate them and provide for them ? 
Can you tell how arduous duties you may be called to 
perform, to what trials of principle you may be sub- 
jected, what sorrows may overwhelm you in your 
passage through the world ? And how, except by 
His direction and aid, can you live to please Him 
who holds in His hands your destinies for this life and 
for eternity ? 

Would any of us venture, inexperienced, without 
a pilot, without chart or compass, to embark his all 
upon an unknown and dangerous ocean ? Of such 
rashness and folly is every one guilty that goes 



GOD'S message to the young. 81 

forth into life without the Bible, and without God, 
to guide him in its daily duties. It is only His grace, 
given through Christ, that can fit you either to live 
or to die. You need it to set out with. It is not 
the proper time to seek it after you have gone forth 
into life's busy scenes ; for who would trust to gird- 
ing on his armor after the battle had begun, or 
fitting out for a voyage after he was upon the ocean ? 

~Nor is it enough to say that it is with God, and 
Him only, to foresee the future of our existence. It 
is with Him not only to foresee but to control it. 
Prosperity, adversity, life itself and death, — in whose 
hands are they but His ? And do you not desire, 
will you not insure for yourself His favor, His 
almighty protection and guidance, before you make 
your venture upon that sea where so many have 
perished, and where without such heavenly guidance 
shipwreck and ruin must surely await you, and may 
come before a single day shall pass?- If, for an 
ocean passage, you might secure not only an infallible 
chart, but a pilot whose power and skill could control 
the very winds and weaves, would you not choose it? 

I trust that many sunny days of health and pros- 
perity will be vouchsafed to you, dear youthful 
reader, if God sees it good for you that it should be 
so. But we need divine grace even to enjoy pros- 
perity as we ought, and rightly to use God's provi- 
dential gifts. Indeed it is an error as great as it is 
common, to think that religion is needed only or 
merely for adversity. It is in every respect " the 
one thing needful." It is as essential to us in pros- 
perity as adversity. Nothing is more hardening, 



82 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUKG. 

nothing more dangerous to the soul, than outward 
prosperity" without piety to sanctify and regulate it ; 
so much so, that our Saviour Himself declared it to 
be " easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye 
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of 
God." 

You need divine grace to prevent the attainment 
of worldly good from proving your very destruction. 
Perhaps the greatest curse that God could inflict on 
you would be to grant you, in your present unre- 
newed state, the desires of your heart, in giving 
you health, riches, and worldly distinctions. " Nor 
[give me] riches, lest I be full and deny Thee, and 
say, Who is the Lord ?" And would not such days of 
unsanctified prosperity, if granted you, prove, above 
all others, " evil days," instead of good ? 

But " evil days " of another kind — those which 
we are most apt to dread as such — are certainly 
coming to you. It is your wisdom to prepare for 
them beforehand. That sparkling eye is to be dim- 
med, that bright face to be shaded by many a sorrow, 
if you live ; for if life, with you, be prolonged to 
many years, it will be only to survive those whom 
you love best, and you will have to suffer the pangs 
of bereavement, besides all those to which you are 
liable from ill health and disappointment. Who can 
tell what to-morrow may bring forth ? Who of us 
can know what calamities and griefs are to fall upon 
him before his course on earth is ended ? Are you 
prepared for them ? 

But there is yet another important view of the 
matter. I should greatly fail if I did not present it. 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 83 

The evils we have to apprehend in this world are 
not, after all, entirely, or even mainly from without. 
The worst troubles proceed from within ourselves. 
" That which cometh out of the man, that defileth 
the man." " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, 
murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false wit- 
ness, blasphemies ; these are the things which defile 
a man." 

Unholy and unrestrained passions, harbored in 
our own bosoms, beget most of our miseries. Has 
not your own experience already proved this ? Are 
you not obliged to confess that most of the unhap- 
piness of your own life, thus far, has proceeded 
from this source ? What sorrow can we not bear, 
when the heart is at peace with itself and God ? 
But when passion rages or conscience upbraids, 
what is a palace but a gilded dungeon ? 

If there is ever a foretaste of hell on earth, it is 
sometimes in a human soul where anger, malice, 
ambition, envy, lust, hold their fiend-like dominion. 
" The wicked are like the troubled sea, which can- 
not rest." 

And what grief is keener than that of remorse ? 
Even little things bring its pain, and when once it 
has fastened upon us, we may feel its fang till our 
dying day. You know not the evil that lies — per- 
haps hidden beneath a surface yet smooth and fair 
— in the inner depths of your depraved nature. 
God only knows it fully, and if you have not His 
grace to restrain and correct it, you cannot tell 
what mischief it may bring upon you. Hazael said 
(2 Kings viii. 13), " Is thy servant a dog, that he 



84 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

should do this thing ?" and yet before many years 
he became a murderer, an usurper, a cruel oppressor 
of God's people. Young persons have been known 
who, having once had as firm a faith in the Bible 
as yourself, afterwards became bold and hardened 
sceptics ; or who, as innocent and amiable as you 
now are, yet, before their career was far run, had 
dyed their hands in the blood of murder, or plunged 
deep into other vices and crimes that involved them 
and many around them in misery. Every human 
bosom is a sleeping volcano. Every sinful heart 
contains within it the elements of hell. Dare not 
to say that, without God, you are safe. The very 
boast may prove your destruction. Do not venture 
without His protection, where so many, once as 
good as you, have made shipwreck of character and 
peace. 

But let us suppose that you never know the 
wretchedness of crime, or even the torments of fierce 
passion. Still the happiness of life depends, more 
than anything else, on the regulation of your tempers 
and feelings in the little things of every-day occur- 
rence. Do you w^ant any better regulation than 
religion will afford in the influences which it will 
bring down, like morning and evening dews, upon 
your spirit ? 

Even when our proud hearts refuse to acknow- 
ledge any criminality, evil passions that rage within 
us darken our sky with black clouds. Do you wish 
to be saved from such unhappiness day after day in 
your coming life ? Let the heart be properly kept, 
and nothing can destroy our peace. And who but 



god's message to the young. 85 

the Being who made you can set your nature right 
or keep it so ? 

How great then — how unspeakably great — in re- 
spect to the preparation for any vicissitudes or con- 
flicts yet to come, the advantage of those whose 
hearts, from early life, have been brought under the 
influence of true godliness ! Oh, how much more 
smoothly and. pleasantly may those who are thus 
furnished and fitted beforehand, expect to pass over 
life's rough sea — that sea whose tempests, O inex- 
perienced young voyagers, you have yet to try ! 
To them, in a certain sense, the roughness of the 
billows is already smoothed before they pass. 

Blessed with God's favor and the indwelling of 
the Spirit, what have you to fear from all the world 
or all the universe? Your very sorrows will be 
sweetened and turned into means of good. The 
clouds you dread will come wafting heaven's bless- 
ings. All things shall work together for your good. 
Influences from above shall distil upon you by day 
and night ; and the Spirit shall breathe on your 
soul, when disturbed by care or agitated by pas- 
sion, those soft, sweet airs which do not ruffle but 
soothe. 

You will be able to look around you at the most 
threatening scene, and into the dark future that is 
before you, with calm serenity, and even to think of 
death without dismay. We are told of a child, who, 
unterrified in a storm at sea, was asked the reason 
of his wonderful composure. " My father is at the 
"helm," was the beautiful reply. Who of us would 
not wish to be able, when the clouds and stormy 



86 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

days of trouble come, to look up to Him, who is 
Almighty, All- wise, All-good, and say, " My Father 
is at the helm ?" Who would not choose such a 
preparation as faith and prayer will minister, both 
for life and for death — such a preparation as God 
will give to all who " remember Him in the days 
of their youth ?" 

" Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for out of it are the issues 
of life " (Prov. iv. 23). 

" Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way ? By taking 
heed thereto according to thy word " (Ps. cxix. 9). 

" A lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path " (Ps. cxix, 
105). 

" Whoso hearkeneth unto wisdom shall dwell safely " (Prov. i. 
33). 

il I have been young and now am old ; yet have I not seen 
the righteous forsaken " (Ps. xxxvii. 25). 

11 Seek ye first the kingdom of G-od, and all these things shall 
be added unto you " (Matt. vi. 33). 

" Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the 
life that now is, and of that which is to come " (1 Tim. iv. 8). 

" If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence " (Ex. 
xxxiii. 15). 

" Come thou with us, and we will do thee good " (Numb. x. 
29). 



PRAYER. 

O God, Thou knowest all things from the begin- 
ning ; the future as well as the present and the past. 
And Thy power-— Thine only — reaches into that fu- 
ture of my existence which I can neither foreknow 
nor control. 



god's message to the young. 87 

I would humbly recognise my dependence and 
crave Thy guidance and keeping in time to come. 
I know not what a day may bring forth ; what is 
before me of self-denying duty, of temptation and 
affliction, of danger to my soul ; or when my life 
itself shall end. All these are with Thee both to 
know and to order. And thou only canst fit me to 
meet them. By Thy help I shall pass through them 
safely and happily ; and even the winds and waves 
of trouble shall but speed my way onward to a bet- 
ter state. 

Father, leave me not to my own wisdom and 
strength, lest they prove to be utter folly and impo- 
tence, to my shame and sorrow both in this life and 
in that which is to come. Young, inexperienced, 
sinful, and weak, how shall I stand, with such 
fearful odds against me as Satan, the world, and my 
own treacherous heart, ail combined? How go 
forth into the great struggle of life without the pre- 
parations of Thy grace ? How fulfil the great end 
of my being but under the direction and with the 
help of Him who made me ? 

Undertake Thou for me, O my God. Be the 
" guide of my youth," and then I know that Thou 
wilt also be my helper in the toils and conflicts of 
coming years, should I be spared, and the stay of 
declining life, when old age or death shall come, so 
that they prove not " evil days to me." 

Grant this for the sake of Him who tasted sorrow 
and death for sinners such as I am. 



god's message to the young. 



CHAPTER X. 

EARLY PIETY AFFORDS GREAT ADVANTAGES IN THE 
PROSECUTION OF A CHRISTIAN COURSE THROUGH THE 
WHOLE OF LIFE. 

All that was said in Chapter VII. will apply here. 
If, in the constitution of our nature, youth is ordained 
to be our time for learning and acquiring the things 
which are to be most valuable to us in after life, then 
it is plain that those whose religious course begins 
with early years will have every advantage in pur- 
suing it afterwards. 

Not only is it far less probable that those who 
put off religion to the very close of life, or to its 
more advanced stages, will ever be converted at all, 
but, even where this takes place, they are able to 
accomj)lish much less in the Christian life than if 
they had begun in better time. Nor will they enjoy 
the same rewards and benefits of God's service, as 
we are most clearly taught in the parable of the tal- 
ents and other parts of Scripture. It would seem as 
if argument here were hardly needful. If the Bible 
taught us nothing on the subject, there is manifestly 
but one decision that our own reason could make. 
Which of the two, let me ask, is to be expected to 
achieve most in the spiritual life either for himself or 



GOD'S message to the young. 89 

others, he who consecrates to God the dew of his 
youth, and from his very childhood begins a life of 
useful action ; or he that with tardy and tottering 
step, and nerves all paralysed by worldly and sinful 
indulgences, conies to drag out a few years in the 
same service ? Do men begin their education, or go 
apprentices to a trade after they have grown old ? 
Do they even in middle life ? And what progress 
would most of them make, if they did ? Or do we 
send the elderly men to the battle-field and not 
rather those in whom the fires of youthful ardor and 
energy are still unquenched ? And so in religion. 
Facts prove it. The whole history of the church, 
from the earliest old Testament times, shows that 
those whose piety dates from childhood and early 
youth are generally those who make the highest 
spiritual attainments, and are most honored of God 
as the instruments of good to their fellow-men. I 
shall presently cite instances in illustration. 

And it is just what we should expect. " Young 
men, ye are strong," said the Apostle John. There 
is an elasticity, an ardor, an activity and energy 
about the youthful character which may be made of 
great value to ourselves and others in the service of 
God; and he that begins his work earliest is cer- 
tainly able to accomplish most. How can a person 
in half a day, or less, effect what he might do in the 
entire day ? True, he may be very diligent and 
may do a great deal in a little time ; but with the 
same diligence, applied for a longer period, and un- 
der all the advantages of an early outset, how much 
more, beyond comparison, might he not accomplish ? 
5 



90 god's message to the young. 

But this holds the more true, in the case now he- 
fore us, inasmuch as when one enters upon a 
Christian life, he has a double task to perform. He 
has not only to become initiated in the love and 
practice of what is positively good, but he has to 
unlearn what is bad ; and this, so far as his feelings 
and habits have any relation to religion, is the un- 
learning of all that he ever learned before. Not 
only has he to strive and pray, day by day, after the 
Christian virtues of penitence, faith, love, meekness, 
humility, spirituality, but to strive and pray also, 
daily, against the impenitency, unbelief, pride, am- 
bition, covetousness, sensuality, to which he has here- 
tofore resigned himself. Will these, O youthful 
procrastinator, readily release you from the serpent 
folds with which they are now, every hour, more 
and more entwining you ? 

There are wounds which, though healed, leave a 
person crippled or deformed for life ; there are 
diseases from which you may recover, but only with 
a broken constitution, never again to enjoy the same 
vigor of health ; there are poisons of which you may 
drink and live, and yet live only to suffer the effects 
of them in every vein and every limb. So it is with 
sin, always so, in a greater or less degree. No one 
can ever indulge in it without suffering some evil 
consequences from so doing ; the longer you conti- 
nue such indulgence, the longer and the worse will 
you feel these consequences. And remember that 
evil, as well as good, grows with years and much 
more rapidly. Weeds grow faster than anything 
else. If the change from irreligion to godliness ever 



god's message to the young. 91 

does take place in you after your early years have 
passed away — and we have seen what probability 
there is of this — you w T ill be obliged not only to deny 
inclinations long indulged, but to break the habits 
of all your former life ; — and who does not know the 
power of habit ? These inclinations, these habits, 
will then exercise their power, not only to hinder 
you from beginning the religious life at all, but to 
harass you through all its subsequent course. These 
constitute, to a great degree, the " cross " which 
our Saviour requires you to take up. If you feel it 
too hard a thing for you to deny yourself now, will 
it be easier then ? If that cross is too much now for 
you to bear, how much lighter, think you, will it have 
become at that future time ? 

Do you say that divine grace can effect the great- 
est changes ? Very true ; but we have reason to 
believe that God generally leaves those who have 
long neglected their duties to Him to suffer, in some 
degree, the effects of that neglect, even to the end 
of life. Your very return to God will be rendered 
more difficult by procrastination and evil indulgence. 
If, after long wandering, your eyes are opened, the 
distance back will seem almost immeasurable, the 
obstacles mountain high. " O," said an aged man, 
struggling in darkness under convictions of sin, "if, 
as some around me are doing, I had but turned my 
attention to religion while I was young, how differ- 
ent it might now have been with me !" Bun y an, 
while yet in his wickedness, being reproved by a 
lady for his profanity, stood silent, and hanging 
down his head, said to himself: " O, how I wish I 



92 god's message to the young. 

might be a little child again, that my father might 
teach me to speak without this wicked way of 
swearing !" 

And so, to a greater or less extent, will it be with 
you, even after you shall actually have entered upon 
a Christian course, if yours should be one of the un- 
usual cases of those who are converted late in life ; 
you will drag with you long and heavily the clogs 
of your former state. God will help you to bear the 
cross, but you will always feel it. There is " a sin 
that easily besets " even the Christian. Have you 
ever known a person that became pious in advanced 
life, who, while he bewailed, as every true Christian 
does, the loss of all the time in which he lived with- 
out religion, did not also tell you how he daily and 
sorely felt still the effects of his long continuance in 
forbidden ways ? And why will you persist in a ca- 
reer which will cause you nothing but grief and loss 
in time to come, if it does not end in the ruin of 
your soul; why embitter the happiness which re- 
ligion is capable of affording you ; why sow a har- 
vest of tares for your own hands to gather and 
winnow ; why blight your soul with a mildew 
which will show its rank mould as long as you stay 
in the atmosphere of a fallen world ; why hope to 
be God's servant hereafter and yet do everything 
now to unfit yourself for that service ; why, I may 
add, expect the happiness of heaven and yet live, 
the best part of your days, in a way that will least 
prepare you for it ? 

The remarks that I have been making as to the 
advantage of an early beginning, in reference to our 



god's message to the young. 93 

progress in holy attainment, apply equally to the 
question of our usefulness. God has appointed for 
every one of us a sphere of beneficent action. He 
has given us, every one, a work to do in His service 
on earth. He has made us not for ourselves only, 
but to serve Him and our race. This truth, men 
seem to lose sight of, but it is one of the great truths 
of the Bible (see Matt. xxv. 25-28, and 34-45). 

This is forcibly and beautifully expressed by Dr. 
Payson. " Not for ourselves but others," he says, 
" is the grand law of nature, inscribed by the hand 
of God on every part of creation. Not for itself but 
others, does the sun dispense its beams; not for 
themselves but others, do the clouds distil their 
showers ; not for herself but others, does the earth 
unlock her treasures ; not for themselves but others, 
do the trees produce their fruits, or the flowers 
diffuse their fragrance and display their various hues. 
So not for himself but others, are the blessings of 
heaven bestowed upon man ; and whenever, instead 
of diffusing them around, he devotes them to his 
own gratification, and shuts himself up in the dark 
and flinty caverns of selfishness, he transgresses the 
great law of creation." 

And if God has appointed for you, in this world 
of sin, and sorrow, and need, a service commensurate 
with the utmost extent of your powers and the ut- 
most limits of your life, how great the work before 
you ! Is it not Encumbent on you now, even in 
your earliest years, to be doing all the good you can 
in the world, and is not this the very way to learn 
how, and to fit yourself for usefulness through all 



94 god's message to the young. 

your future years ? And what an angelic, what a 
godlike art and service, for you to be making pro- 
ficiency in ! How much better, for reasons that 
have been before us, the' opportunities of progress 
and success, on the part of those who begin the study 
and practice of it with youth on their side ! Is not 
everything best acquired at your time of life ? And 
how can a person do, for the church and the world, 
in ten years of his latter life, what be could do in 
forty or fifty, with the advantage of youthful train- 
ing and practice ? 

This, however, is not all. You cannot travel year 
after year through life, without leading other souls, 
perhaps many, in the same path with yourself. Of 
this I have already reminded you. But let us sup- 
pose that you at last repent and barely escape per- 
dition ; what will become of your companions ? 
How will you undo the mischief you have done 
them ? Some of the number will probably be gone 
to eternity, and you will then be able to do no more 
than weep for them tears of unavailing anguish. 
But, if living, they will probably be among the many 
who, after spending their youth as you and they are 
now doing, remain impenitent through life ; and 
should you hereafter even go and tell them of your 
repentance, in order to counteract the evil you have 
done in their case, it will probably be only to meet 
with their derision. You will find yourself too late ; 
and instead of your leading them, your conversion 
will separate you from them. Oh, if you had but 
undertaken this when you and they were young, 
how different might have been the result ! 



god's message to the young. 95 

Beginning a life of piety now, others might, and 
probably would, be led by your example to " re- 
member their Creator " also " in the days of their 
youth." Perhaps many would. How great, often- 
times, the influence of one young friend over an- 
other ! Your brothers — your sisters — your school- 
mates and companions — can you tell how many of 
them might be made Christians, through your Hea- 
venly Father's blessing upon your prayers, your 
pious words, your conscientious and holy example ? 

Your becoming a Christian may, of itself, power- 
fully impress their minds. Nothing speaks to a 
youthful and warm heart like the conversion and 
public profession of a young friend. The feelings 
of your companions, like your own, are now tender 
and susceptible. It will not be so always. 

And even your parents and older friends, if yet 
irreligious, may be led to the love and fear of God, 
by what they see in you, and in answer to your 
youthful prayers. How much good may you thus 
do, even before your early days are over; how much 
in a whole lifetime spent in that way from its very 
beginning. Who of us, till he tries, can tell what 
he may accomplish for the welfare of the world ? 
And how great a part of all this must be lost to 
God's service, to your fellow-men, to yourself, if you 
suffer youth to run away without making any 
beginning of the work which your Maker has 
given you to do ! Are you willing to lose such 
opportunities, and lose them for ever ? 

" Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth 



96 god's message to the young. 

unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark " 
(Phil. hi. 13, 14). 

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; 
they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and 
not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint " (Is. xl. 31). 

"They go from strength to strength " (Ps. lxxxiv. 7). 

" Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish 
in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old 
age " (Ps. ix. 13, 14). 

" The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath 
clean hands shall be stronger and stronger " (Job xvii. 9). 

" The child [John Baptist] grew, and waxed strong in spirit" 
(Luke i. 80). 

" The child [Jesus] grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled 
with wisdom : and the grace of God was upon him " (Luke 
ii. 40). 

u Thou wicked and slothful servant, * * * * thou 
oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at 
my coming I should have received mine own with usury." 

" Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness " (Matt, 
xxv. 26, 2T, 30). 

" I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, * * 
* * henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness " (2 Tim. iv. 7, 8). 

"Well done, good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful 
over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. 
Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord " (Matt. xxv. 21). 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER. 

I must acknowledge all that I have been reading 
in this chapter to be most true and reasonable. If 
I am to be a Christian at all, shall I not be one with 
my whole heart ? Shall I not be worth something 
— nay, as much as I possibly can — to the cause of 



god's message to the young. 97 

God and the interests of the fallen race to which I 
belong ? In the light of a future world and looking 
back from the far remote tracts of a coming eternity, 
how little will all appear that I shall or can accom- 
plish, in this life, for myself or others, in the service 
of my Maker! Shall I then leave more than half 
the rich harvest ungathered,— more than half the 
golden fruit unplucked ? 

O Thou whose I am, and whom I ought to love 
and serve continually and faithfully and fully, let 
me enter upon this service now while I am young, 
and before I am clogged with worldly cares. Let 
me not bury one " talent." Let no soul perish that I 
might be the means of saving. Let me not, in a 
dying hour, at thy judgment bar, or in the never 
ceasing memories of eternity, look back upon any- 
thing as left undone that I ought to have done ; but 
let me, through Thy grace, fulfil all that Thou hast 
given me to do — all that, by the utmost exertion of 
the powers Thou hast endowed me with, I can do, 
for a lost world, while I live in it. Let me begin 
now in the morning of my life, and let my last hour 
find me still at my post, growing in holiness, laboring 
in Thy work, and rejoicing that all my days were 
spent for Thee. 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE ADVANTAGES OF EARLY PIETY, AS SET FORTH IN 
THE PRECEDING CHAPTER, APPEAR IN NUMEROUS 
EXAMPLES OF SCRIPTURE BIOGRAPHY. 

I have referred to the history of the world, as show- 
ing the truth of what has been said of the effect of 
early formed religious character on the holiness and 
usefulness of following life. If you are a reader of 
the Bible, examples in proof will occur to your own 
mind. Certainly some of the most eminent and 
honored of all God's servants mentioned in Scripture 
records were of the class to which I wish you to be- 
long, of those who sought and loved Him in early life. 
The son of a mother's prayers who became both 
the chief ruler of God's people, and one of the most 
eminent of His prophets (1 Sam. i., ii., iii., especially 
i. 27, 28 ; ii. 26) — the youth whom God took from 
the " sheep-cote " and placed on the throne over the 
same people, and who was still more highly honored 
in being the inspired writer of the most poetical 
and devotional part of the sacred volume (Ps. lxxi. 
5, 17 ; with 1 Sam. xvii.) — that other shepherd boy, 
whose story forms the most romantic and beautiful 
biography ever written; who, himself narrowly 
escaping violent death, carried away into hopeless 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 99 

exile and slavery, and even made the tenant of a pri- 
son, became in God's wonderful providence the grand 
vizier of a kingdom the most civilized and powerful 
of that period, and in rising to this station became 
also the savior of his family and of the elect race 
(Gen. xxxvii. to xxxix.) — the young Jew of royal 
lineage who, doomed to a like exile froma conquered 
and ruined country, after a miraculous deliverance 
from cruel death, which he braved for religion's 
sake in a pagan land, rose to a like station in the 
then ruling empire of the world, and threw a power- 
ful influence in behalf of God's captive people into 
the imperial courts of Babylon and Persia, and was 
distinguished above almost all the prophets in the 
revelations made to him — the three companions of 
his youth and his exile, whose names have been em- 
balmed to us in sacred story, who, like him, exposing 
themselves to martyrdom for God and the truth, 
were in like manner rescued and elevated to places 
of honor (Dan. i., iii., vi.) — the royal officer whose 
piety shone like a star in midnight darkness, at the 
court of Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings xviii. 12) — the 
boy king who, when a mere child, began to reform 
Israel, and brought about a great revival of true 
religion in declining times (2 Kings xxii. ; 2 Chro- 
nicles xxxiv. 3) — and then, that other child of 
prayer who became, as our Saviour Himself de- 
clared, the greatest of all the prophets, whom He 
eulogized as He never did any other man, whose 
honor it was — the highest of all human honors — to 
herald the coming Messiah, and then to baptize Him ; 
and whose preaching, that stirred the slumbering 



100 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

mind of a whole nation as perhaps no man's ever 
did, made him the greatest of preachers the world 
has ever seen (Luke i. 15, 80) — what a list of en- 
couraging examples for the young ! One of these 
at least, as I wish you especially to notice — and he it 
is that holds perhaps the highest place, of all mere 
men, in Scripture history — was a person whose piety 
was that of a whole lifetime, from its earliest period. 
This was true of John the Baptist, as it may also 
have been of others among those whose names have 
just been mentioned. And have not your very first 
studies of the New Testament furnished you a 
higher example of the kind, in Him who came not 
only to die for us, but to show us how to live ? To 
these illustrious examples of Samuel, David, Joseph, 
Daniel, Obadiah, Josiah, John, about which we are 
certainly informed, as being examples of early piety, 
we perhaps would be authorized in adding the 
names of Abel, the first of God's servants ever per- 
secuted and martyred ; of Abraham the " friend of 
God," the " father of the faithful," the chosen head 
of the chosen race ; of Isaac, the next of the patri- 
archs of Israel ; of Moses, the statesman, the gene- 
ral, the lawgiver, the historian, the poet, the pro- 
phet, the leader of the tribes to the promised land, the 
writer of the world's primitive history and of some 
of the most important portions of the Bible, whom 
we may certainly call one of the greatest men the 
world has ever produced ; of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, 
the great prophets whom God raised up to instruct, 
to comfort, and reform His people in their captivity 
and its previous calamities, and whose writings form 



god's message to the young. 101 

some of the largest and most interesting prophetical 
books of the Old Testament (Jer. i. 5 and Ezek. 
iv. 14) — of Timothy, the young companion and 
fellow-missionary of the great apostle, honored so 
much with his friendship, the person to whom he 
addressed two epistles of the sacred canon (2 Tim. iii. 
15). In regard to all of these cases, there is ground for 
strong probable conjecture of early piety, in circum- 
stances actually mentioned in the sacred narrative ; 
and if we may add them to the undoubted instances 
above mentioned, we have a catalogue of the early 
pious, furnished by the Bible itself, which embraces 
no inconsiderable portion of those whose names stand 
most conspicuous on its pages, as distinguished for 
high spiritual character, and for the eminent stations 
of usefulness which they filled. 

But it is to be remembered that in the larger pro- 
portion of the cases of good and useful men whose 
names occur in Bible history, the biography is very 
brief and partial, and no account is given of the 
early part of the person's life. Who can tell, there- 
fore, were the facts supplied, how many more might 
be added to the brilliant galaxy of clear instances 
from among the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and 
other eminent saints of God ? If so great a num- 
ber of the persons whose youthful life is actually 
described in sacred history, are found to have been 
living a life of piety in early years, what a strong 
presumption does it afford that an equal proportion 
of the rest would have exhibited instances of the 
same kind, had their cases been fully known ? If the 
catalogue were thus completed, would we not 



102 god's message to the young. 

probably find it to embrace a large majority of 
those whom the Bible holds up before us as the 
greatest and best men of the church, the most 
blessed of God themselves, and made most a bless- 
ing to mankind. And the fact that, among those 
whose earlier history is given in holy writ, we find 
such a number of instances of early formed religious 
character, while it affords the strongest encourage- 
ment to the young themselves, ought to lead us to 
inquire why it is that these instances are not far 
more numerous now. 

But, beloved young friends, when you are tempt- 
ed to neglect prayer, Bible reading, sabbath keep- 
ing, God and religion, " in the days of your youth," 
think of Joseph, Samuel, and the many worthies 
whose names are, I trust, familiar to you from your 
own reading of the Bible, and who, while young, 
maintained prayer, feared God, and showed a pious 
zeal, in times of religious declension, in foreign lands, 
in exile, in captivity, in the dungeon, in the den of 
wild beasts, in the fires of the martyr furnace, but 
above all, amid the utmost blandishments which 
power, wealth, and sensuality could throw around 
them, to draw them away from God. Was there 
ever greater constancy in God's fear than that of 
the young Hebrew, as related in the thirty-ninth 
chapter of Genesis : more heroic firmness and devo- 
tion to God than were shown by the four young 
martyrs of Babylon — for they were virtually mar- 
tyrs ; or more noble zeal for the interests of reli 
gion than that of the royal boy of whom the books 
of Kings and Chronicles tell us ? 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 103 

These are examples pictured before all youthful 
readers of the Bible, of what men may become and 
can do where they begin early, and are long in the 
service of God. Do you wish to be like them? 
Imitate them in obeying the divine call, to "re- 
member your Creator" in your youth. Seek the 
renewing and indwelling of that same Spirit which 
filled the soul of the great Forerunner from his birth. 
Like him, begin your life with God, if you would, 
like him, have it said of you, when you are gone 
from the world, that while you were in it, you 
"fulfilled your course" and were a burning and a 
shining light. 

" The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance " (Ps. 
cxii. 6). 

" Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ " (1 Cor. 
xi. 1). 

" And mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensam- 
ple" (Phil. hi. 11). 

" Whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversa- 
tion" (Heb. xiii. 7). 

" That every one of you do show the same diligence; * * 
* * that ye be not slothful, but followers of them who 
through faith and patience inherit the promises " (Heb. vi. 11, 12). 

"And Samuel died; and all the Israelites were gathered toge- 
ther, and lamented him " (1 Sam. xxv. 1). 

"He [John Baptist] was a burning and a shining light" 
(John v. 35). 

"Among those that are born of women, there is not a greater 
prophet than John the Baptist " (Luke vii. 28). 

" We also are compassed about with so great a cloud of wit- 
nesses " (Heb. xii. 1). 

" Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners " 
(Heb. xii. 5). 



104 GOD'S message to the young. 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER. 

Joseph, Samuel, David, Daniel, John ! Sweet 
names to every youthful reader of the Bible ! Who 
would not wish to be like them ? Who does not 
feel that it would be good to spend his early years 
as they spent theirs ? Who does not desire to be 
such a child as Samuel, or John Baptist, such a 
youth as Joseph, David, or Daniel? Can I ever 
forget the glow of admiration and pleasure with 
which I first read about them in my Bible, or heard 
the story from my father or my mother? Those 
truly great and good persons, of whose youthful 
sanctity I read in Scripture, are now gone from 
this world. Some of them have been in heaven two 
or three thousand years. And if it gives me pleasure 
to read of what they were, and of what they did 
for God's glory, and the good of the world, in their 
young days here on earth, how much more pleasure 
does it afford them to think of it ? A childhood, a 
youth of piety, is it not the brightest jewel in the 
crown of glory, which they now wear — would they 
be willing to live differently, if they could come 
back to this world, and pass their probation over 
again ? Could they cherish now any desire in re- 
gard to their lives here, except that they had lived 
more for God than they did ? And how shall I 
wish that I had spent my days when my life on 
earth is done, and through all eternity ? Will I not 
then esteem it better to have lived and served God 
as they did, than to have enjoyed all the wealth, 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 105 

and all the fleeting honors of this world ? I am 
now where they once were. When I go to that 
eternity where they are, I can never come back 
here to live my life over. And even in the present 
existence, when once I am old, I cannot become 
young again. The opportunities which I now enjoy, 
when once gone, will return no more for ever. If I 
do not make a beginning now, my life can never be 
like that of the holy persons whose names are cited 
in the pages before me. 

O Thou great and blessed One, whose love and 
glory they are enjoying above the skies, let me be 
like Joseph, Samuel, Daniel, Josiah, like John the 
Baptist; but above all, like the child Jesus. Let 
my life here on earth, let the days of my youth, be 
spent like theirs, and then I shall enjoy for ever the 
same rewards of Thy grace in which they are now 
rejoicing. Grant this, for the sake of that Redeem- 
er to whom all Thy saints of the Old Testament 
times looked forward, through sacrifices and signs, 
as a Saviour to come, and to whom all Thy saints 
of New Testament times look back, as a Saviour 
come, and through whom all alike must enter 
heaven. 



106 god's message to the young. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE ADVANTAGES OF EARLY PIETY ARE, IN LIKE 
MANNER, ILLUSTRATED BY MANY INSTANCES IN 
THE CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY OF LATER AGES. 

In the last chapter examples were adduced from 
Scripture history, to show the value of early piety, 
in its influence upon the holiness and usefulness of 
subsequent life. To the names there given, which 
shine with such radiance in the firmament of the 
ancient church of the Old and New Testament, I 
will now add some from the biography of later 
times. They will be such as my young readers will 
probably find themselves already acquainted with, 
as those of some of God's most eminent servants. 
Perhaps the library of the family, or the sabbath- 
school, has furnished you with the memoirs of the 
greater part of these excellent and truly illustrious 
persons ; and the names are inscribed on your me- 
rnory, as if in characters of heaven's own light. 

The first example that I shall cite, is that of a 
personage whose name and character are familiar to 
all readers of English history. In Edward VI., as 
in the Josiah of Scripture, we behold the instance 
of a pious boy-king ; and in this station of royalty 
— the most difficult, perhaps, for piety, of all human 



god's message to the young. 107 

positions — he served God with noble fidelity, through 
a life and a reign adorned by elegant accomplish- 
ments, as well as devotion and beneficence, which 
terminated in his sixteenth year. 

Lady Jane Grey, with whose name we are equally 
well acquainted, also added the loveliness of youth- 
ful piety to the lustre of her remarkable early 
talents and acquirements. 

The reputation of Theodore Beza will ever en- 
dure as a man of learning, a theologian, and a pro- 
moter of the reformation in Switzerland and France. 
His devotion to God, according to his own state- 
ment, began at the age of sixteen. 

Bishop Hall, of England, was one of the most 
eminently pious men of modern times; and his 
works have been greatly blessed to the comfort and 
edification of Christians. Before the close of his life, 
which was prolonged to eighty-one years, he said : 
" O God, thou knowest how sincerely and heartily, 
in those my young years, I did cast myself upon thy 
hands." 

The Rev. Philip Henry a was noted," as we are 
told, " for three things : piety, industry, and self- 
denial;" and was remembered by his Christian 
friends as the " great, good, glorious Mr. Henry." 
He was blessed too in being the father of such a son 
as Matthew Henry. Though brought up at the 
court of Charles I. and a companion of the young 
princes, his mind seems from his early youth to have 
been very much under the power of religion. This 
was owing, in great measure, to the instrumentality 
of pious parents, especially of his mother. Speaking 



108 god's message to the young. 

of this, he says : " If ever any child from ten to 
fifteen enjoyed line upon line, precept upon pre- 
cept, I did ; and I trust, not in vain." He seems to 
have dedicated himself to God at about fifteen years 
of age ; at which time he was admitted to the Lord's 
Supper. 

Matthew Henry, whose admirable commentary on 
the Scriptures has made his name so well known, 
was the son just spoken of; and he, like his father, 
had a deep, thorough religious experience at an 
early age, giving clear evidence of piety by the time 
that he was eleven years old. His sister, known in 
after life as Mrs. Savage, was likewise an example 
both of early intellectual powers and attainments 
and of early religion. She lived to the age of eighty- 
eight, and through nearly all those years was a child 
of God. 

Baxter, Richard Baxter — who has not known 
something of him, through his " Saint's Rest " and 
u Call to the Unconverted," if not in the history of 
Ins life of godly toil and suffering and usefulness ? 
He was decidedly converted by the time that he 
was fifteen years of age. But he had strongly felt 
the influence of religion for many years before, and 
was himself not sure that the date of his spiritual 
change might not be placed earlier. 

England cherishes the name of Sir William Jones, 
as one of her greatest linguists and scholars. This 
noble man was a reader and admirer of the Holy 
Scriptures, and probably pious from boyhood. 

The name of Dr. Doddridge lives in his " Family 
Expositor," his admirable hymns, and other works ; 



god's message to the young. 109 

but, most of all, in his " Rise and Progress of Re- 
ligion in the Soul." He began preaching at twenty 
or twenty-one, and was eminent in the pulpit. He 
too, like some that have been mentioned, seems to 
have begun life by a pious childhood. He was ad- 
mitted publicly to the church at sixteen, but it is 
related of him that before thirteen he was dis- 
tinguished alike for " piety and diligence." 

Lady Huntingdon, whose name has become so 
well known to the Christian world by her friendship 
for Mr. Whitefield and her remarkable labors of 
holy benevolence, was thoughtful and prayerful, and 
lived under powerful impressions of religion from 
almost infantile age, though her piety, for w r ant of 
proper instruction, seems not to have been matured 
until she arrived at adult age. 

Her daughter, Lady Langham, was one of the 
most gifted and accomplished women of her own 
or any age ; and her piety, which seems to have 
dated from quite juvenile years, was as marked as 
that of her mother. Her veneration for the sanctity 
of the sabbath was uncommon, and her mother made 
the remark of her that " she was the child who 
never offended her in all her life." 

The name of Isaac Watts, the admirable Dr. 
"Watts, illustrious, otherwise, through his preaching 
and writings, who of us does not cherish it, and 
what generation will not remember it, in its con- 
nexion with sacred lyrics ? And the fact must be 
an interesting one to young persons, that the author 
of the Divine Songs for Children and of the Psalms 
and Hymns was himself pious, as well as remarkably 



110 god's message to the young. 

intelligent, at seven years of age, if not earlier, and 
composed most of his hymns when he was a young 
man. 

President Edwards, the great metaphysician and 
preacher, was not only a prodigy of intellect but an 
example of most eminent spirituality. His piety 
may probably be dated as early as that of Dr. Watts, 
and was remarkable in its degree, even in his boy- 
hood. A sister and a daughter of this great man, 
both of them ladies of high intelligence and Christian 
character, began their lives of godliness also with 
their childhood. 

President Davies, whose preaching so charmed, 
impressed, and blessed the age in which he lived,- 
and will continue through his written sermons to 
produce its effects in time yet to come, belongs also 
to our present interesting list ; his religious charac- 
ter having been formed, as we have reason to be- 
lieve, by his decided conversion when he was twelve 
years old. 

President Dwight, the great divine and preacher, 
whose name, as well as that just given, will be re- 
membered by my young readers in connexion with 
some of the sacred compositions of our hymn books, 
was probably another example ; as also the Rev. 
Dr. John Rodgers of New York, who was one of 
the most eminent Christian ministers of his day. 

Dr. Samuel Finley, whose name is held in venera- 
tion as a minister and teacher, and a promoter of 
some great schemes of philanthropy, seems to have 
belonged to the class of those whose Christian cha- 
racter was formed in childhood. 



GOD'S message to the young. Ill 

The same thing is true of Robert Hall, of Eng- 
land, so justly ranked among the most eminent pul- 
pit orators of modern times. He commenced his 
preparation for the ministry at fifteen, and actually 
became a preacher while he was yet a very young 
man. 

Very similar in all these points, was the case of 
Thos. Spencer, whose powers as a youthful preacher, 
during his brief career, so astonished and impressed 
those who heard him. He seems not only to have 
dedicated himself to God, but also to have desired 
the ministerial work, from childhood. 

The late excellent Dr. Milne, missionary to China, 
also manifested remarkable piety and devotion while 
he was a very small boy. 

The same early beginning we find in the case of 
the saintly Mrs. Isabella Graham. She was con- 
scious of an intelligent dedication of herself to God 
at seven years of age. 

Mrs. Mary Lundie Duncan, whose character pre- 
sents so lovely a blending of intellectuality and spi- 
rituality, had a similar experience at the same age, 
and it is said of her, that "outward observers could 
not tell the time when she was not under the in- 
fluence of religion." 

Dr. Payson too, whose memoir, as well as that of 
Mrs. Graham, has been so much valued by Christian 
people, made a public profession of religion at seven- 
teen, but it is not certain that he was not a subject 
of grace several years before. 

The late venerated Dr. A. Alexander began his 
long life of spirituality and usefulness from about 



112 god's message to the young. 

the age of seventeen, as also Dr. Adam Clarke, the 
distinguished preacher and commentator. 

Augustus Hermann Francke, so well known as 
the pious and benevolent founder of the Halle Or- 
phan Asylum, had a sister who, we are informed, 
" to all appearance loved God from her infancy ;" 
and this little sister, before her early death, exerted 
a happy influence on the religious character of that 
brother, who was afterwards to be so good and 
useful. 

Another case of the same interesting character is 
that of the Duchess de Broglie, whose piety shone 
with such lustre of contrast, amid the follies and 
vices of the Parisian court. She said of herself, "I 
cannot recollect the time when I did not love God. 
From my earliest years, I took delight in reading 
the Scriptures and in committing myself to the 
Saviour." 

C. F. Schwartz, the modern apostle of South- 
western India, was dedicated to the missionary 
work by a pious mother on her death-bed ; and 
from all that can be learned, it is probable that he 
was regenerated in his youth. He began his pre- 
paration for the missionary work while he wag quite 
a young man in the University. 

Dr. William Carey, so extraordinary from boy- 
hood for his talents and self-gotten acquirements, 
but more honored in the memory of the Christian 
world as a pioneer missionary to India, was a child 
of grace from fourteen years of age ; and his well 
known friend, the Rev. Samuel Pearce, from the 
aere of sixteen, 



god's message to the young. 113 

The late Dr. J. Scudder affords another instance 
of early religion ; as also the lamented W. M. 
Lowrie, missionary to China, who gave evidence of 
divine renewal at sixteen. Dr. S. was one of the 
most devoted and useful servants of God that has 
lived in our times. His memory will be cherished 
by the youth of our country for the efforts which 
he made to engage their hearts in behalf of the 
heathen. Not less than five of his own sons and 
two of his daughters are now engaged in the same 
missionary work, among the people of India, in 
which he died laboring successfully. 

The mind of the gifted and devoted Mary Jane 
Graham was deeply affected by religious truth at a 
very early period of her life; and she manifested 
intelligent piety at seven years of age. 

Those eminent missionary ladies, Harriet Newell 
and Harriet Winslow, each made a public profession 
at thirteen, but gave evidence of belonging to 
Christ's flock before that time. 

The saving change was wrought in the heart of 
James B. Taylor when he was fifteen ; and few have 
served the Master better in a brief career, or set a 
higher example of piety and zeal in college-life. 

I will close this delightful compilation with the 
name and testimony of the late venerable William 
Jay, whose character as a preacher and a writer 
stands so high with the Christian public, and whose 
piety shed its mild radiance over years of unusual 
longevity. Said he, in one of his latter works : 
" Some of us can speak from experience. We were 
enabled early to dedicate ourselves to God : and, 
6 



114 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

next to the salvation of our souls, we daily praise 
him for an early conversion." 

It will be noticed — and it is a fact to be studied — 
that in all the cases which have been cited, with the 
exception of one or two, the regenerate life began 
at an age not beyond seventeen — in many of them 
as early as twelve or thirteen ; in some from the 
very first years of childhood. 

Besides these well defined cases, there have been 
others in which, as in the instance of Augustus H. 
Francke and of Lady Huntingdon, a manhood or 
womanhood of holy character and influence were 
preceded by religious thoughtfulness and habits of 
devotion through the early part of life. This was 
true, even from infancy, of Oberlin, the admirable 
pastor of the Ban-de-la-Roche. It was true also of 
the excellent Halyburton of Scotland, whose "Great 
Concern " perpetuates his memory ; of Brain erd, the 
holy, apostolic, and successful missionary; and to 
some extent also of Whitefield, the great evangelist 
of modern times, and Summerfield, whose powers 
as a young preacher produced such an impression in 
England and America, at a later day. These last 
two, it is true, were at times, in their early life, car- 
ried away into vice and wickedness, but they were 
also, at this period, the subjects of deep religious 
impressions and lively convictions of sin. The rest 
of those just mentioned may be said to have spent 
their childhood and youth, to a great extent, under 
the influence of religion; and in all these cases the 
great change was developed at from seventeen to 
twenty-one years. If we shall reckon, among the 



GOD'S message to the young. 115 

examples of early piety, instances of conversion oc- 
curring within this period, along with those which 
date before it, the number of such examples would 
be vastly augmented ; and we should arrive at the 
impressive result that few, very few, of those whom 
God honors and blesses in his service on earth, are 
of the number of those who are converted after 
they arrive at adult years. 

And let every young reader remember, as his 
mind reverts to the instances that have been here 
adduced, how many of them were not only of early, 
but of very early devotion to God. Nor were these 
all that our research could have been made to yield. 
Our present rich collection might have been extend- 
ed and adorned by the addition of other names 
illustrious in the annals of sanctity and benefi- 
cence. 

Nor can there be any doubt that we could gather 
yet another harvest of illustrations, if we could as- 
certain how many of the most eminent servants of 
God now living — ministers, missionaries, and others 
— were youthful disciples of the Saviour. And 
then, how many of God's loveliest ones have died 
in their childhood or youth ; how many have been 
gathered, while yet they were lambs, to the Mas- 
ter's fold in heaven. And if we could pursue the 
investigation, what a multitude of other such cases 
might be found among Christ's choicest people, who 
never attained a place in printed biography, but in 
their respective stations have shone or are shining 
now, in the beauty of surpassing holiness and useful- 
ness, as stars of the church on earth. 



116 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

What shall the record be, dear youth, of youi 
life, of your early days, in the remembrances of time 
and the chronicles of eternity ? 

"The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting 
upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's 
children " (Ps. ciii. 17). 

" My goodness extendeth not to thee ; but to the saints that 
are in the earth " (Ps. xvi. 2, 3). 

"These are they which came out of great tribulation, and 
have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of 
the Lamb " (Rev. vii. 14). 

" Their works do follow them " (Rev. xiv. 13). 

"Yet will I gather others to him besides those that are 
gathered " (Lsa, lvi. 8). 

"Blessed is the man in whose heart are the ways of them" 
(Ps. lxxxiv. 5). 

" That thou mayest walk in the way of good men and keep 
the paths of the righteous" (Prov. ii. 20). 

"I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than 
to dwell in the tents of wickedness " (Ps. lxxxiv. 10.) 

" There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the 
Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me in that day; and not to 
me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing " (2 Tim. 
iv. 8). 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER. 

What a noble cluster here too of names ! Teach- 
ers, authors, ministers of Christ, missionaries, and 
other servants of God, holy men and women, whose 
record will last, in the remembrance of the good, 
and in the happy influence of their lives, through all 
the generations of time. Better, far better, as I 



god's message to the young. 117 

cannot but feel, for me to be what they were, in 
the character and ends of their living, than to wear 
the laurels of the world's conquerors and heroes, or 
wield the sceptre of empire, or revel in unsanctified 
ease and pleasure. Some of these names, from my 
earliest years, have been associated in my memory 
and imagination with the most beautiful images of 
human excellence : and whenever I think of them, 
the feeling rises in my own bosom, this picture is a 
pattern for me, — I ought to be like these saints of 
God. How plainly will this appear a thousand years 
hence ? 

And I cannot but mark the fact, so prominent in 
their history, of the early commencement of their 
holy service to God and their fellow-men. Nor can 
I resist the conviction that this was one great secret 
of their becoming what they were. Some of them 
lived a very short life, and would therefore have 
done nothing for God and the world had they not 
begun thus early. Had the case been different with 
them in this particular, then some stars, which have 
shed their light on this lower world, and now shine 
more resplendent in the glory of Christ's heavenly 
kingdom, would never have arisen. And what an 
evident fitness, what a beautiful symmetry, where 
the Christian course of later life has had its beginning 
in youth; the morning, the noon, the evening all 
alike ; the path, from its beginning to its end, like 
the path of an angel's feet ! 

Shall I be such, in the measure of my abilities and 
opportunities, as were these admirable persons? 
Shall I begin as they did? Shall I begin in the 



118 GOD'S message to the young. 

" days of my youth?" This, oh this, is the ques- 
tion which the contemplation of such cases forces 
upon me, and which, between the drawings of con- 
science and right feeling on the one hand and those 
of outward and inward evil influence on the other, 
my heart struggles and hesitates to decide. 

God of my life! God of my youth ! help me to de- 
termine it rightly and at once. And let the same 
grace, through Christ, avail for me which has been 
efficient to make some of the human family so illus- 
trious in " the beauty of thine own purity and bene- 
ficence." 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 119 



CHAPTER XIII. 



EARLY PIETY IS PECULIARLY ACCEPTABLE TO GOD. 

A great and very dangerous abuse has been made 
of the eleventh hour parable, by applying the 
latter part of it which speaks of the ninth and 
eleventh hour classes, to persons who, after having 
heard the gospel all their lives, at last repent. This 
interpretation, taken in connexion with the conclu- 
sion of the parable, in which the laborers are all 
placed on the same footing of favor, would make 
the service of a mere remnant of life as acceptable 
to God as that of a whole lifetime, and the reward 
equally great. Nothing can be more false or more 
contrary to God's word. Any one who inspects the 
parable can see that the ninth and eleventh hour 
classes were designed to describe and to encourage 
persons of any age, class, or nation, and those only, 
who have not previously enjoyed such privileges, 
but repent as soon as they do hear the gospel 
call* 

* For some impressive and valuable remarks of Dr. Chalmers 
having allusion to this parable, the reader is referred to his 
Essay, published as an introduction to Baxter's Call (Am. 
Tract Society's Edition, Page 21). 



120 god's message to the young. 

The latter part of the parable, therefore, has no 
more application to aged persons than to others. 
A young Hindoo, or Chinaman, or African, or 
South Sea Island child, would have a right to apply 
it to himself which no aged sinner here could claim. 
Nothing, in fact, could be more monstrous than to 
suppose that the repentance and piety of old age or 
a dying hour can be as pleasing to our Maker as that 
of our healthful or our early life. Is the full-blown 
rose as sweet to you as the early bud with the dew 
of the morning fresh upon it? Would you be 
honored by any one who should offer you the dregs 
of a cup which he had first drained ? 

But we are at no loss to know what God thinks of 
the matter. The very command, " to remember our 
Creator in the days of our youth," shows how he- 
regards youthful piety. Would He give the command 
and not be pleased with our obedience to it, rather 
than with gross *and long-continued disobedience ? 
Where, in all God's word, do you find such promises 
and invitations to the old, as it addresses to the 
young? Where does it say, Remember thy Creator 
in the days of thy old age; Take heed that ye despise 
not one of these aged ones, for in heaven their angels 
do always behold the face of my Father ; Suffer the 
old to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of 
heaven ; Out of the mouth of the grey-headed 
and decrepit hast thou perfected praise ? True, we 
can offer nothing to God that will, in itself, be worthy 
of acceptance on the part of so great and holy a 
Being — nothing that will be free from the taint of 
sin • but if there is any earthly offering that can be 



god's message to the young. 121 

pleasing to him, it must be that of a young heart in 
the warmth of its early affections, breathing peni- 
tence for sin and desire after holiness. 

Such an offering, O youthful reader, make haste 
to yield Him, while yet you have opportunity. 
The bud soon expands, to be a bud no more. 
Morning hours soon fly away. Youth will not last 
always. Your morning is fast verging to noon. 
Religion may indeed yet be yours, if you let the 
present period of your life pass without it, but youth- 
ful religion never. It may be yours, but you will 
never be able to say to your own heart, to God, to 
the companions of your bliss in heaven, that you 
sought and found him early ! You may be renewed 
and saved — perhaps, as by fire, through the furnace 
of afflictions and chastisements — but the opportunity 
of honoring your Creator by remembering Him in 
the days of your youth will be gone for ever. In all 
your earthly life, in all your immortality, you will 
have your youth no more to give to Him who 
created you. Remember that if once it pass with- 
out being devoted to Him, you will then have been 
guilty of having utterly and for ever failed to obey 
your Maker's great injunction to you and all the 
young ; and through all the remembrances of com- 
ing time and eternity, the morning of your life on 
earth will appear overshadowed by a cloud ; and 
that will be the thought of this disobedience and 
of your youthful days wholly lost to God and the 
great ends of existence. 

" To obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Samuel xy. 22). 
"Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for 

6* 



122 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

thyself long life ; neither hast thou asked riches for thyself, nor 
hast asked the life of thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself 
understanding to discern judgment : Behold I have done accord- 
ing to thy words ; lo, I have given thee a wise and an understand- 
ing heart ; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither 
after thee shall any arise like unto thee. And I have also given 
thee that which thou hast not asked" (1 Kings hi. 11-13). 

u Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast per- 
fected praise" (Matt. xxi. 16). 

" Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones " 
(Matt, xviii. 10). 

" "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in 
me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about 
his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea" 
(Matt, xviii. 6). 

" Suffer the little children to come unto me" (Mark x. 14). 

"Feed my lambs" (John xxi. 15). 

11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd ; he shall gather the 
lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom" (Isaiah xl. 11). 

"If thou seek him, he will be found of thee" (1 Chron. xxviii. 

9)- 

" So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight 

of God and man" (Prov. iii. 4). 

" The child Samuel grew on, and was in favor both with the 
Lord and also with man" (1 Samuel ii. 26). 

" I rejoiced greatly, that I found of thy children walking in 
truth" (2 John 4). 

" I love them that love me ; and those that seek me early 
shaU find me" (Prov. viii. 13). 



PKAYER. i 

O my Heavenly Father! is there anything 
that I can do, or that I can render, that will be 
pleasing to Thee ? And shall I not perform it ? 
Shall I strive to please my parents, my teachers, the 



GOD'S message to the young. 123 

friends I venerate, and even my young companions ? 
Do I find pleasure to myself in fulfilling their wishes 
and requests ? And shall I not be ready to serve 
and please the infinitely great and good Being who 
made me ? 

" What a condescension for an angel's service to be 
accepted of Him ? And will the great Jehovah 
deign to notice me ? Will He be pleased with any- 
thing that I can do for Him ? 

I cull sweet flowers for the friends I love and 
honor — what have I to offer my parent of parents ? 
Shall not the flowers of my life's morning and 
spring-time he offered to my God ? 

I owe myself to Thee. Ten thousand times more 
than I can give or do would be too little to offer 
One to whom so much is due. And wilt Thou 
accept the offering of a heart like mine, hitherto so 
dead to all that is good, and so defiled with sin ? 
Thou hast said that an humble and contrite heart is 
the most acceptable sacrifice that man can yield to 
Thee. Give me such a heart while I am yet young; 
let me consecrate to Thee the dew of my early fife ; 
and let Thy pleasure henceforth and for ever be 
mine. 

This I ask through Him, whose meat and drink it 
was to do Thy will, and whose atoning blood must 
sprinkle all our sacrifices. 



124 god's message to the young. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

EARLY PIETY CONTRIBUTES TO THE HAPPINESS OF 
THE PRESENT LIFE, AND WILL PREPARE US FOR 
GREATER FELICITY IN THE LIFE TO COME. 

True piety yields high and noble pleasures, even in 
this world. Such will always be its effect, whether 
in your youth or in your later days. It is only be- 
cause men mistake the real nature and sources of 
happiness that they can ever think otherwise. 

Even if we could suppose anything different to 
be true, our duty would not be altered. If religion 
held out no rewards in this life, — if it were, as most 
persons seem to think, only a system of burdens and 
restraints, — it would nevertheless be incomparably 
better to submit ourselves to it, than to be without 
it, and run the risk of everlasting perdition. 

But who can doubt, even if he has never had ex- 
perience in the matter, that piety must have its 
pleasures, and pleasures as far superior to all that 
flow from unsanctified sources, as true religion itself 
is superior to anything merely earthly and temporal. 
If it is from God and heaven ; and if it sets our 
hearts right, if it makes us like God Himself, then 
it must tend to make us happy, just in proportion 
to the degree in which we possess it. 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 125 

Religion is love; and who does not know that 
the highest happiness of human minds is found in 
the exercise and exchange of affection ? How 
loving and lovely then, and consequently how 
happy, would religion make all human beings, if all 
were imbued with it in a high degree ! 

It is this which creates the felicity of angels. 
They are happy because their hearts glow with pure 
and perfect love to God and all his creatures. And 
so, except for some distresses which we must feel for 
others, w r e shall be happy, even in this world, just 
in proportion as we are loving and good ; and no 
true, solid pleasure can be enjoyed in a state of 
estrangement from God. The beautiful and costly 
instrument must be strung and tuned afresh by the 
hand of Him who made it, before it can ever give 
forth its sweetest music. The celebrated Elizabeth 
Fry, who afterwards found so much happiness in 
labors of pious usefulness, wrote, while she was liv- 
ing an early life of gaiety and brilliant worldli- 
ness : " I feel, by experience, how much entering 
into the world hurts me. Worldly company, I 
think, materially injures me : it excites a false stimu- 
lus, such as love of pomp, pride, vanity, jealousy, 
and ambition ; it leads me to think about dress, and 
such trifles ; and when out of it we fly to novels 
and scandal, or something of that kind for amuse- 
ment and entertainment." 

But, if you still have doubts on the subject, ap- 
peal to your pious friends. Ask your own dear 
father or mother, your teachers, or your young com- 
panions, — any of them that you think truly pious. 



126 god's message to the young. 

Do they not tell you — any, all of them — that their 
new spiritual life, and this only, has afforded them 
what they regard as the true happiness of their ex- 
istence ? Some of them have given you this testi- 
mony with their dying breath. One reason, indeed, 
why Christians sometimes do not seem to other per- 
sons to have much enjoyment in this life is, that 
having tasted something better, they have lost the 
relish for many of those things in which worldly 
people find some sort of gratification which is called 
pleasure. But another reason, it must be confessed, 
is, that besides those who may be Christians only in 
name, many of those who are truly such, possess 
piety in so low a degree as they do ; having enough 
to create a distaste for the inferior pleasures of the 
world around them, and yet not enough to afford 
them high spiritual enjoyments. This is not the 
fault of religion itself. It is owing rather to a de- 
ficiency of it. 

But if it has pleasures for you — pleasures far su- 
perior to those of a merely worldly kind, you cer- 
tainly will have longer experience of them, by be- 
ginning a life of godliness while you are young. 
And you will have a higher enjoyment of them too, 
as long as you live, for having so done. It is not to 
be expected that God will bestow the smiles of His 
favor on those who, having spent the greater part 
of their days in folly and sin, give Him grudgingly 
some of the last, as He does on those who devote to 
Him their earliest and best. " It is those who have 
made the earliest sowing that, in the autumn of life, 
will reap the most of the golden ears." 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 127 

And every one knows that we enjoy all pleasant 
things with a higher zest while we are young, and 
our feelings are warm and lively. There can be no 
doubt that young Christians have higher religious 
enjoyments than other persons of equal piety, for 
the reason that their spiritual pleasures mingle with 
the warmly gushing feelings, the lively imaginations, 
the sanguine hopes of the youthful mind. 

Not the autumn, not even the summer, can gar- 
nish the earth with flowers and verdure as the spring 
can do ; and religion, instead of being, in respect to 
its influence on our happiness, unsuitable to our early 
life, finds its best adaptation in the juvenile mind 
and character. Would you think the pleasures of a 
bright day, a walk, a visit, marred by the presence 
of your parents or of some friend whom you love 
and venerate ? That friend might indeed some- 
times check you and sometimes whisper a gentle 
suggestion, but would you regard this as interfering 
with the enjoyments of the hour ? Would not such 
society rather contribute to its real pleasures, and 
would you not congratulate yourself upon having 
the presence of a counsellor, who would not only 
warn you of what might prove injurious, but point 
out new objects of entertainment, and share your 
pleasures with you ? And who would not feel that 
a^ day or hour thus spent, in innocent and well 
regulated enjoyment, is worth far more than one 
given up to giddy and unrestrained recreation ? 

The world is under a great mistake on this point, 
and young people themselves are apt to be deeply 
infected with the error. The service of God is not, 



128 god's message to the young. 

as seems to be generally supposed or felt by the ir- 
religious world, a service which imposes severe and 
arbitrary restraints, taking away our liberty, and 
crossing without reason our natural desires after 
happiness. If this were true, then you might, in- 
deed, have some cause to shun it if you safely could, 
and sport away the sunshine of life's early hour. 
But, dear young reader, you must yourself see that 
this cannot be so. It is a reflection on our blessed 
Creator to suppose that it can be. Such a senti- 
ment is nothing but the doctrine of Satan, the he- 
resy which desolated Paradise and ruined the world ; 
for the Tempter preached to our parents that they 
would find enjoyment in disobeying their Maker. 

The will of God and our best interests are coin- 
cident ; duty and true happiness always go together. 
Men, in their sinful hearts, deny this, and disbelieve 
the pleasures of piety; because they never have 
had, and while they remain in their natural, de- 
praved state, cannot have any experience of them. 
They cannot understand them, any more than a 
man blind from birth can understand the beauty of 
colors, or a man always deaf appreciate the charms 
of music. " The natural man receiveth not the 
things of the Spirit of God ; neither can he know 
them, because they are spiritually discerned." Does 
religion interfere with you in any of your desires or 
pursuits ? If so, it is only to save you from evil, 
and direct you to what is good ; to correct your 
errors and purify your heart, to take you by the 
hand and lead you safely, steadily, happily through 
youth and through life. And is it nothing, is it not 



god's message to the young. 129 

worth more than all the sickly and transient " plea- 
sures of sin," to be able to look up at all times to 
the infinite God as our Father, and to heaven as 
our home ? 

A great deal of our happiness, moreover, consists 
in pleasant recollections. How much less of re- 
pentance, humiliation, and sad reflection will over- 
cast the thoughts of later years, if you begin your 
life with God, by an early devotion of yourself to 
Him. And how sweet the memory of a youth spent 
in the ways of piety. There is no one who has ever 
had experience of it but would declare that it is 
worth ten thousand times more than all the plea- 
sures of a worldly life. What a satisfaction is there 
in the recollection of duty done and time rightly 
spent. This, if you devote your youth to God, you 
will have through all your years to come, even 
should you live to hoary hairs. Piety in the heart, 
instead of destroying, will heighten your proper en- 
joyments. It will sweeten your true pleasures, and 
brighten your brightest hours as they pass. And 
all the pleasures which it yields you now, you will 
enjoy anew whenever your mind reverts to them. 
Sinful gratifications leave a sting behind them, and 
that sting we feel as often as we renew the memory 
of them, if it be a thousand times. Even those 
which are innocent, where they are enjoyed with- 
out religion, leave little behind them but regrets 
that they are gone. The mind is still hollow and 
craving. But not so with religion. It not only 
holds up a lamp to shine on the path before us, as it 
leads us onward and upward, but illumines and 



130 god's message to the young. 

beautifies to our eyes the track behind us also. Our 
holy pleasures fill and satisfy the mind while they 
last, and it can derive new enjoyment from every 
remembrance of them. They are like the manna in 
the wilderness, or the loaves in Christ's hands, which 
failed not, however much consumed; like angel's 
food which can be fed upon, with fresh delight for 
ever! 

If your days on earth are to be long, how cheer- 
ing in the toils and struggles of middle life, and in 
the solitary path of old age, to be able to remember 
that the journey was begun under Heavenly guid- 
ance and favor. And if you die early, how great, 
beyond all price, the satisfaction of knowing then 
that if your " youth " was all you had to spend on 
earth, you did " remember Him," and spend it all 
for Him. How many, in life's later years, or on a 
death-bed, have lamented their not having given 
their hearts early to God ! When Patrick Henry 
was near the close of his life, he laid his hand on the 
Bible, and addressing a friend who was with him, 
said, " Here is a book worth more than all others 
printed, yet it is my misfortune never to have read it 
with proper attention until lately." How many have 
had such regrets ! But who has ever heard of any 
one expressing sorrow either in his dying hour, or 
at any other time, that he had lived, from his youth, 
a life of godliness ? Theodore Beza, in his last will 
and testament, thus expressed himself: " I bless 
thee, O God, for many things, but especially that I 
gave up myself to thee at the early age of sixteen." 
Philip Henry, at the age of forty-five, commenting 



god's message to the young. 131 

on the text, " My yoke is easy," &c., made the de- 
claration: "I have been drawing, in a poor mea- 
sure, for thirty years ; I have found it an easy yoke, 
and love my choice too well to change." And it w T as 
the dying testimony of Matthew Henry, that " a 
life spent in the service of God, and communion w 7 ith 
him, is the most comfortable and pleasant life that 
any one can live in this world." The words of Mr. 
Jay have been given in a preceding chapter ; and 
the experience of these great and good men, on this 
point, is that of all w r ho have been, like them, early 
travellers in the path of piety. 

Nor can there be any doubt that the felicity and 
glory of heaven itself, through all eternity, will be 
greater to you for having thus remembered Him, 
and thus spent your youthful days; not only be- 
cause we shall have a perfect memory there of our 
life in this world, but because God will most richly 
endow, with the capacity and the fruition of its 
blessedness, those who have longest and best served 
Him here below. " Give to him that hath ten 
pounds." Seek therefore at once the Saviour's love 
and your Heavenly Father's favor. Let the influ- 
ences of heaven and holiness mingle w T ith all your 
thoughts, your feelings, your purposes; and then 
you will have a rich experience of heaven-born plea- 
sures, such as no after-conversion will ever bring 
you. 

" Great peace have they which love thy law " (Ps. cxix. 165). 

" What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, 

that he may see good ? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy 



132 god's message to the young. 

lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good ; seek 
peace and pursue it " (Ps. xxxiv. 12-14). 

" Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the 
treasures in Egypt " (Heb. xi. 26). 

" Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? 
and your labor for that which satisfieth not ? hearken diligently 
unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul de- 
light itself in fatness" (Is. lv. 2). 

"The gold and the crystal cannot equal it [wisdom] : and the 
exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold " (Job xxviii. 
17). 

" G-odliness with contentment is great gain " (1 Tim. vi. 6). 

"Her [wisdom's] ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her 
paths are peace " (Prov. in. 11). 

The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more 
and more unto the perfect day " (Prov. iv. 18). 

" Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit 
be in the vines ; the labor of the olive shall fail and the fields 
shall yield no meat ; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and 
there shall be no herd in the stalls ; yet I will rejoice in the 
Lord, I will joy in the Glod of my salvation " (Hab. hi. IV t 18). 



PRATER. 

O Thou from whom all good flows to all creatures, 
Thou hast formed me for Thyself, and I cannot but 
believe that, under Thy protection and guidance, 
enjoying Thy communion and love, fulfilling Thy 
service, the most perfect and blessed state of intelli- 
gent and immortal creatures like myself must ever 
be found. This Thy own word declares, and my 
godly friends testify their experience of its truth. 

Thou art the "fountain," the infinite and ever- 
flowing fountain of true peace and happiness. All 






GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 133 

that I enjoy here on earth, all my capacities 
of enjoyment, come from Thee ; how excellent, 
how glorious must be the source from which all 
that is lovely and good in creation flows ! And 
where is an immortal mind to find what will fill 
its vast desires, but in Thee ? All beside this — all 
that the world and Satan and a fallen nature would 
promise me — all that I would find in estrangement 
from Thee, must be " broken cisterns that can hold 
no water." 

Let me know, O my Father in heaven, the blessed- 
ness of these who enjoy Thy favor. 

" For, thou gracious Giver of all good, 

Thou art of all Thy gifts thyself the crown ; 
Give what Thou wilt, without Thee I am poor, 
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away." 

I hope to enjoy Thy love as my chief felicity in 
the world of glory. Thy smile illumines heaven, 
and kindles the joy of angels ; let that smile, for my 
Redeemer's sake, ever be upon me, and then, what- 
ever may come, I shall be blest in life, in death, and 
through all eternity. 



134 GOD'S message to the young. 



CHAPTER XV. 

EARLY PIETY IS THE ONLY MEANS OF SECURITY 
AGAINST THE FEARFUL LIABILITY OF A HOPELESS 
EARLY DEATH. 

Facts to which I have before pointed you, show 
that it is very doubtful whether your salvation will 
ever be secured, if not now. And if you should live 
on to the end of your course in an irreligious state, 
then continued life — the life on which you place so 
many fond hopes — instead of proving a blessing will 
be a curse. 

But you may be cut down, cut down in the very 
flower of early years. You may never live to become 
a man or a woman. " The days of your youth " may 
be the only time that you ever will have to serve 
God and prepare for eternity. The whole of your 
existence, if you reached Methusaleh's age, would 
be little enough for so great a concern. There is 
not a moment to be spared from it of the longest 
life. What folly, what monstrous madness are men 
guilty of in putting it off to a sick-bed and the last 
hour. The great business of life — for which even 
four-score years would seem too short — crowded 
into a few of its last moments, when, even if we 
have reason and the power of thought, we are 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 135 

almost wholly unfit for doing anything, much less 
that which demands the highest exertion of the in- 
tellect and the mightiest effort of the soul. " An 
age," said the dying Altamont, " were too little for 
the much I have to do." 

Even if you might hope by possibility to repent 
and obtain pardon in your last hours, it would only 
be to mourn over the whole of your earthly exist- 
ence as wasted. When William Pitt, the great states- 
man of England, after a career of the highest human 
glory, came to die, he said : " I fear that I have, like 
many others, neglected my religious duties too 
much to have any ground to hope that they can be 
efficacious on my death-bed." 

What doubt, what fear hang over a dying-bed 
repentance ! Indeed, it is almost a contradiction to 
speak of such a thing. What is a forced repentance 
worth ? Is it repentance at all ? The penitence of 
the sick-bed or of the hour of danger is hardly ever 
anything else than the mere excitement of alarm, 
and is no better than that of the criminal, who 
trembles because punishment is about to fall upon 
him, and not because he is really sorry for his 
crimes, and who would perpetrate the same deed 
for which he is to be punished, if he were tempted 
again. How many have you ever known of those 
who seemed to be penitent in the hour of extreme 
illness, or of some great peril, and yet escaped 
death, that afterwards showed the signs of true 
conversion ? 

And would you hang your salvation on so forlorn 
and desperate a hope as that of life's last hurried, 



136 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

trembling, agonized hours ? And where do you 
find the encouragement to believe that God will 
show you mercy and grant you a passport to hea- 
ven in those closing hours? Read, I beg you, Pro- 
verbs i. 24-32, and Luke xii. 40, and you will see 
that He warns you of the very contrary. 

What presumption, to reckon upon any future 
opportunities for repentance — even those of a sick- 
bed. You do not reject religion, you say ; you only 
put it off " to a more convenient season." But in 
whose hands is your breath ? To whom belongs the 
morrow ? To w^hom but Him whom you are neg- 
lecting, against whose authority you are rebelling, 
every hour you live ? What daring impiety, as well 
as folly, in these hopes of yours ! 

A dread uncertainty hangs over that future on 
which you so much count. Alas ! it will disappoint 
you, if it does come, of many fond expectations. 
How great a majority of men die, regretting the 
failure of more than half the hopes of early life ! 
There is nothing more perfidious than that " deceitful 
heart" (Jer. xvii. 9) which you carry in your own 
bosom ; no greater liar and cheat than he who be- 
guiled our first parents with promises of knowledge 
and life, while he was plotting their destruction, and 
who even dared to tempt our Lord with the pro- 
mise of " all the kingdoms of this earth ;" no greater 
scene of dreams and illusions than that of the false 
world which entices your young and too yielding 
nature. If it should give you all it promises, or ever 
can give, of outward good, you will have to say, at 
last, with the great monarch, " all is vanity [empti- 



god's message to the young. 137 

ness, unsatisfactoriness] and vexation of spirit." 
And then, oh, then, to think of losing heaven into 
the bargain, losing it without gaining what you ex- 
pected and what you sacrificed it for ! 

But that uncertainty, that terrible uncertainty, 
that overshades every hour of your coming days — 
the uncertainty of life itself! Will you hazard your 
everlasting all upon a thing so dubious ? Are you 
willing to live with a sword like that which hung 
over the head of Damocles, everywhere and every 
moment suspended over you ? Do you need proof 
of this doubt and hazard ? Look around you — look 
back. See how many of your young companions 
are fallen ; how many graves, not of your older 
friends only, but of your youngest, line every step 
of the dangerous path along which you are treading. 
The next on the wayside may be yours, and you 
will then, if still unchanged, die a death of youthful 
impiety and lie in a hopeless grave. Your dying 
day will then be the darkest in the black catalogue 
of " evil days " which you may be called to pass 
through, without God and religion. It will be, with 
dreadful emphasis, " the evil day ! " 

You can, perhaps, call to mind some of your early 
companions who died in the midst of a youth in 
which they had " remembered their Creator. 5 ' As 
you stand by their graves, and through your tears 
read their loved names on the tombstone, joy min- 
gles with your sorrow for them ; the very sod seems 
to grow greener, the trees to wave a more beautiful 
foliage, the birds to carol a sweeter song over that 
spot, and you feel that it is a place filled with the 
7 



138 god's message to the young. 

melodies and odors of heaven ! How pleasant the 
memory of a pious child, a pious youth, taken to 
heaven ! 

But, oh, how different with some others that have 
gone ! You have perhaps stood by the last bed of 
some who died in early impenitency and hopeless- 
ness ; and if it was not your feeling, it was that of 
their more pious or thoughtful friends, while they 
wept tears of anguish for them, that a world would 
be too little to give if they could but be able to 
know that the departing one was of the number of 
those who had " remembered their Creator." But 
no ! youth, life, was fled, and fled for ever ! 

And so it may be with you. God's displeasure 
against you is increasing every day that you live, if 
you are living in unmindfulness of Him. If you de- 
spise His tender and condescending call to " remem- 
ber " Him, then you may call on Him when " the 
evil days" of old age, or sorrow, or sickness, or 
death shall " come," but call in vain. On a dying 
bed you may lift up your cry to Him too late, while 
you have just time to remember and bewail your 
youth lost to God and heaven. Then how awfully 
will the thought haunt your soul, that in your heart 
you forgot your Creator "in the days of your 
youth." You too, like some that you have known, 
may be cut down both early and suddenly, " the 
silver cord " be snapped, " the golden bowl broken " 
to fragments, in some unlooked for moment, and 
your young companions, your fond parents, gaze on 
you, before the glow of youth and health has had 
time to fade from your cheek, turned into a corpse 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 139 

and folded in a winding sheet. But, oh, it will not 
be because they see your eyes set in death, your 
limbs turned to cold marble, that they will w^eep 
most. Bitter, scalding tears, wrung from breaking 
hearts, will flow for you, because every remem- 
brance of you will bring up to them the thought of 
a youth misspent, a hopeless death-bed, a spirit lost, 
&nd lost for ever. Think not that your being born 
of godly parents will insure your salvation. In- 
stances to the contrary occur in the Bible itself. 
Aaron and David had to mourn for sons hopelessly 
cut off (see Numb. xvi. and 2 Sam. xviii. 33). 

Pious relatives and Mends may indeed first be 
taken away ; and it is remarkable how they are 
sometimes removed "from the evil to come." But 
if they do survive to see you thus die, it will be to 
mourn you with a sorrow too deep for any pen to 
describe. What grief can ever compare with that 
of losing a friend in impenitency ? Yet, terrible as 
their affliction may be, the worst of the case will 
not be to those sorrow-stricken survivors. They 
may, it is true, lament you through all their remain- 
ing life ; they may even die broken-hearted ; but 
this to them will be all. Their sorrows will soon 
have an end ; — will end for ever — will end in heaven ! 

But yours— everlasting weeping, endless despair, 
tears never to be wiped away, sorrows, not like 
theirs, but mingled with and aggravated ten-fold by 
self-crimination and remorse ! How can you endure 
the thought of such a fate ? How for a moment 
bear to be in such peril ? How live a day without 
the assurance of pardoned sin, and destitute of a 



140 god's message to the young. 

hope of heaven? Make sure, at once, that such 
an end be not yours. Your Heavenly Father grants 
you continued life, health, youth, purposely that 
you may seek His grace and obtain salvation. 

Think, therefore, think betimes, of your duty to 
your Creator, of the great end for which he made 
you, of your sins against Him. Seek reconciliation 
with Him, through that Saviour who encouraged 
even " little children " to come to Him. Give your- 
self up to His will and service, and do it without 
delay. Then you will have nothing to dread in death. 
It will come to yon — let it come whenever and how- 
ever it may — not as the king of terrors, but as a 
sweet angel messenger, to bid you to a Father's 
home and a Saviour's bosom in the skies. 

" There is but a step between me and death " (1 Sam. xx. 3). 

" All are of the dust, and turn to dust again " (Eccl. iii. 20). 

" Man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the 
streets" (Eccl. xii. 5). 

" In such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. 
(Matt. xxiv. 44). 

" Know thou that for all these things G-od will bring thee into 
judgment" (Eccl. xi. 9). 

" Where the tree faUeth there it shall be" (Eccl. xi. 3). 

"Madness is in their heart while they live, and after that 
they go to the dead " (Eccl. ix. 3). 

" He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall 
suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy " (Pro v. 
xxix. 1). 

"And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and body are 
consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart 
despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, 
nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me " (Pro v. v. 
11-13). 



GOD'S message to the young. 141 

1 ' Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be 
like his " (Num. xxiii. 10). 

"Omy son Absalom, would G-od I had died for thee. Ab- 
salom, my son, my son " (2 Sam. xviii. 33). 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER. 

Death early, sudden ! And is it true, is it even 
possible, that this may be my fate ? In the very 
midst of youth ? In a day, a night, an hour, nay, 
perchance an instant ? How the heart recoils at 
the thought ! But can I boast any security of life 
not possessed by others who have been stricken down 
from my very side, almost as suddenly as if by a 
flash from the thunder cloud ; the rose scarce fading 
from the young cheek, the light from the beaming 
eye, before it was said " He is dead," " She is 
gone ! " 

Does not death, in fact, make his most sudden 
and rapid onsets where the young are his prey? 
Does not every one know that the very flush and 
fire of youthful life give swifter wings to disease and 
accident ? 

My young companions, some of them, almost be- 
fore I knew it, gone, buried, the jaws of the grave 
closed for ever upon them ! The flower nipped in 
its early bud — night coming before the noon of life ! 
Did not some of them, with their own last breath, 
call upon me to beware ? Can I ever forget those 
tones of voice, those silent looks of dying eyes, that 
seemed to penetrate my very soul? Messages of 
warning those were from the very gate of the eternal 



142 god's message to the young. 

world. And did not a cold shiver of fear pass over 
me, as I marked death's work upon them, and 
thought within myself that so it might be with me? 

So it may indeed be. Their history may be mine ; 
and mine, like theirs, a grave where the turf will be 
growing, before it would seem that it was time for 
me to die. 

O Thou who hast given me my being ! let me not 
be taken away suddenly in my youthful sins. Let 
me turn to Thee while life, and health, and oppor- 
tunities are continued to me. Let me not, by my 
persistence in neglect and disobedience, weary Thy 
patience, and provoke Thee to cut me down in Thy 
wrath and cast me off for ever. Let me through 
Thy grace, granted me for Jesus' sake, so live that 
death, to my thoughts, shall lose its terrors. " Let 
me die the death" of some whom I have known and 
loved, and who had thus lived. " Let my last end," 
O God ! whether it come sooner or later, whether 
it come suddenly or with warning, "be like theirs." 



PARTING WORDS. 

And now, dear young friend and reader, my work 
for you is finished. It has been by no means an 
unpleasing task. On the contrary, the thought of 
its being made the means of drawing some young 
heart to the Creator's love and service has been 
most cheering, in all the labor. 

Yet, though I have felt a deep interest in the sub- 
ject, I am obliged to confess that my warmest 



god's message to the YomsrG. 143 

thoughts have been too cold and feeble, in view of 
what its intrinsic importance and interest seemed 
to demand. An angel's mind, an angePs pen could 
hardly set it strongly enough before you. May a 
higher than an angel's power impress it on your 
heart ! 

One thing, nevertheless, I know, and that is, 
that w T hat I have addressed to you, however im- 
perfectly, ought to convince you and lead you to 
immediate action. An array of motives more com- 
plete could never be brought forward to prove 
anything. They are not of my devising. They 
have their existence in truth and fact more real 
and momentous than words can adequately convey. 
They are just what God's word in general, His 
special message to you, and the common under- 
standing of every person would furnish. They 
stand before you upheld by every dictate of your 
own reason and every impulse of true self-interest ; 
armed with the authority of your Maker; sur- 
rounded by every sanction of a final judgment, 
heaven, hell, eternity. You cannot yourself refute 
or deny a single one of them. Indeed you will 
hardly attempt it or think of it. I doubt whether 
one of them will ever be controverted or questioned 
by anybody that reads this book. Will you then 
go against them all ? Will you set aside everything 
that your own understanding declares to be true 
and good ? 

If God Himself has pointed out to you the time 
from which your duty and services to Him are to 
begin ; if He has the highest possible claims on 



144 GOD'S message to the young. 

you and right in you ; if He has laid upon you His 
most solemn and peremptory command ; if you are 
living in continual and accumulating guilt every 
hour that you live in unmindfulness and neglect of 
Him ; and if, at the same time, the fitness of early 
life for learning all that is good, the more favoring 
nature of outward circumstances at that period, 
the very necessities of your preparation for future 
duties and trials, the far greater ability of being 
good and useful through coming life, the proof of 
this afforded in the lives of so many of God's most 
eminent servants, the assurance of doing what will 
be peculiarly pleasing to Him who made you, and 
of adding to your own happiness in time and eter- 
nity, with the peril of an early and hopeless death, 
all combine to point out to you the same course ; — 
then can you doubt, for a moment, what you ought 
to do ? One course, and but one, is plain before 
your eyes. All of duty, all of safety and good are 
in it. Ten thousand voices, that ought to reach 
your inmost spirit, call you to pursue it, and that 
without delay. 

If ever there were reasons enough for human 
conduct, they are here. You act in no other case 
whatever with motives more powerful, — nay, with 
motives a half, a tenth, a hundredth part so strong. 
Arguments far less plain and conclusive would move 
you in any matter, where some opposing influence 
of transient interest or gratification did not obstruct. 
Such opposing influences are just what are operat- 
ing in your case. There is not one proper argu- 
ment or reason to put in the scale against the 



GOD'S message to the young. 145 

weighty considerations that have been presented. 
All the better sentiments of your nature speak in 
their favor. It is only your depraved inclinations 
that do or can resist them. 

How could any one withstand them for a moment, 
if there were not something wrong in him ? If you 
can do so any longer, it shows that you are strongly 
bound to sin and Satan, — far more strongly than 
you have ever yourself imagined; and that you 
ought to be greatly alarmed at your present con- 
dition. 

Have you not already received many messages 
from God? Have you not, though young, both 
heard and resisted many calls not only of His word 
but of His Providence ? Pious friends have warned 
you, — some of them, it may be, on a dying bed and 
with their last breath. Perhaps it was in the last 
accents and with the last embraces, the last loving, 
beseeching looks, of a venerated father or a tender 
mother, at whose knee you first learned God's 
name, but whose form is now hidden, whose voice 
hushed, in the grave. Could ever a call more 
solemn, more touching reach you, this side of your 
own death-bed ? Ah, that parent, that pious friend, 
will never come back here to repeat those warnings. 
But what they said will not be buried in their 
graves. It will be remembered, to your everlasting 
joy or sorrow, at the judgment : 

11 Those silent lips shall wake and yet proclaim 
A dread amen to truths they uttered here !" 

Perhaps you have yourself been arrested by sick- 



146 GOD'S message to the young. 

ness ; death, it may be, has stared you in the very 
face. If so, what promises, what vows did you 
then make ? Have yon fulfilled them ? You have 
stood, perhaps, and heard the last groans and cries 
of some godless companion, who, in awful words, 
bade you beware of his fate ; or, what was almost 
as fearful, seen him pass out of life in the uncon- 
sciousness of delirium, without a word of warning 
or a thought of dying. 

These things at times moved you and even made 
you tremble. You have been " almost persuaded." 
Yet you have postponed, resisted, grieved the 
Spirit. 

How near, how very " near to the kingdom " do 
young persons sometimes come ; at times so near 
that it seems as if one step further would bring 
them in ! 

Are you thus lingering about the threshold of a 
Christian faith and profession, — your judgment, your 
conscience, your best feelings, your pious education, 
the example and persuasions of many that you must 
love and revere, all drawing you towards it, and 
some, it may be, of your own loved young com- 
panions already numbered among Christ's followers, 
and beckoning you to come in and join their com- 
pany. Take that final step. Enter in, and be 
blessed for ever. Oh, enter, dear youth ! while now 
the gate is open just before you. 

You have enjoyed many opportunities and ad- 
vantages, especially if educated in a pious family. 
What a vast amount of instruction and privilege do 
young persons so situated often enjoy, in the course 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 147 

of all the years they spend under the paternal roof? 
And oh ! it is a solemn and alarming thought, that 
your very reading of the Bible, your Sabbath-school 
duties, the prayers and instructions of the family, 
the sermons you hear, the tracts and good books 
you read, the exhortations of Christian friends, and 
all the means of spiritual good which you enjoy— 
if you do not, with God's promised help, improve 
them to your salvation — -will but aggravate your con- 
demnation and final ruin. Better far would it be 
to die a heathen child or a heathen adult, than to 
die an unconverted child of a Christian family or a 
Christian country. 

Nor can you resist these means and influences 
which draw you towards God, without hardening 
your heart and getting farther from Him. Mrs. 
Fry, while she was yet pursuing a career of brilliant 
worldliness, said of herself: " I am like one setting 
out on a journey ; if I set out on the wrong road 
and do not try to recover the right one before I 
have gone too far, I shall be very likely to lose my 
way for ever, and every step I take the more difficult 
shall I find it to return. Therefore the temptation 
will be the greater to go on till I get to destruc- 
tion. On the contrary, if now I turn into the right 
path, I shall feel more and more cpntented every 
step I take." 

But may I hope something more favorable of you 
than what has been suggested ? Do some of those 
better thoughts and feelings of which I have spoken 
still linger with you ? Have any such been awa- 
kened, or awakened anew, in the reading of these 



148 god's message to the young. 

pages ? Cherish them, oh, cherish them as your 
life. Let them not leave you, lest they leave you 
for ever. Remember the ease to which I have before 
referred, of the young man who came to Jesus, con- 
versed with Him, publicly manifested a desire of 
salvation, and in so unusual a degree drew the 
Saviour's heart to him, but, after all, turned his back 
on Christ, went away in his sins, and probably never 
was saved. You may be nearer, now, yourself, to 
that Saviour and to heaven than you will ever be 
again, even should you live to fourscore. 

Do you say that you feel but little inclination to 
thoughts of God and religion ? You may never 
have any greater than you now have. The longer 
you live as you are now doing, the less you will 
probably desire the great and needful change. 

To continue in the neglect of God is the very way 
to harden your heart towards Him. The religious 
thoughts and feelings of your early life may pass 
from you, as, alas! I have sometimes seen the 
case, like the mists and dews of the morning, and 
pass away never to return. Oh, cling to any that 
you have, as you would cling to existence itself! 
They are as the life of your soul. Cultivate them 
by all the means in your power ; avoid everything 
that would repress them ; do not be ashamed to 
make them known to godly friends who may aid 
you by their counsels and prayers, and would de- 
light to do so ; but, most of all, seek the help of 
God Himself, in following whither these better 
thoughts and feelings would lead you. Have you, 
at any former period, had convictions of duty and 



god's message to the young. 149 

inclinations towards religion, that have now left you ? 
Try to recall them. Pray that they may return to 
you. Those impressions — those God-ward and 
heaven-ward desires of a young heart — oh, they 
may be worth more to you than a thousand worlds ! 
Resolve that you will cherish them and follow them 
till your youthful sins are pardoned through Christ, 
your youthful but depraved nature renewed, and a 
heart be given you to remember in youthful love, 
gratitude, penitence, and faith, the God who made 
you. Call upon Him, through that Saviour who 
manifested such peculiar condescension and affec- 
tion towards the young, to carry on the work which 
perhaps His Spirit is already beginning in your 
heart. If you do this sincerely and earnestly, your 
prayers will be heard. 

He remembers with special grace those who in 
youth remember Him, to seek and serve Him. 
Doing this, you will yourself, in future years, think 
of the choice of your early days, and the remem- 
brance will bring no pang with it. The very me- 
mory of it will be worth more, a thousand times 
more, than all the gratifications for w r hich you are 
now tempted to forsake your God. 

Beginning thus with His protection, guidance, 
smile, and favor, its morning will merge into a calm 
and bright noon, and then, if old age come on, into 
a sweet and serene evening. When sorrows come, 
they will but make you feel in a higher degree the 
value of a Christian's faith and hope, and rejoice the 
more in your early acquisition of them. And if 
your life should be soon and suddenly cut short, 



150 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

you will not only be able to meet death without 
fear, but will then have the happiness of knowing 
that the few days you spent on earth were all given 
to God. How such a thought will brighten a dying 
hour, how sweetly mingle even with the joys of 
heaven ! 

A vain world, the Tempter, your own evil heart 
say, " some future time," " a little older." But God 
commands you, " now," " now," — " remember me 
now." You cannot disobey Him without guilt ; you 
disobey Him at your utmost peril. He has seen the 
necessities of your case, and takes as it were special 
pains to warn you and call you to Himself, while 
you are young. This He does, as I have before 
reminded you, because He sees both how wicked it 
is towards Himself and how injurious and dangerous 
to you, to live away, as you are now doing, the first 
and best part of your life on earth. If you neglect 
your duty to Him, and despise His calls, so specially 
and kindly made to you and all the young, He may 
withdraw all the gracious and saving influences of 
His Spirit, and abandon you to hardness of heart 
and final impenitency. 

As it is, you are getting further and further away 
from Him every day ; and who can tell how far any 
one may go, if the protection and care of his Creator 
be withdrawn from him ? And not only is there 
such danger of your going to fearful lengths in 
iniquity, if thus abandoned of Him, but every step 
that you do take in the downward path will, in that 
case, be a step never to be retraced. 

I have already adverted to the uncertainty of life, 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 151 

the risks of your present condition, the fearfulness 
of death where it comes unexpected and unprepared 
for. Let me ask you, before we part as writer and 
reader, what can ever repay you — I will not say 
for the loss of your soul — but even for the risks, 
the tremendous risks which you are running ? Every 
day that you live in your present state you imperil 
more and more your everlasting all. Every step 
you take in life conveys you further in that road 
which leads down to death. Flowers of bright hue 
may indeed bloom there, but deadly adders lurk 
beneath them ; the air may seem to be nothing but 
sunshine and sweet odors, but the poison of death is 
in its every breath ; the way seems smooth and 
inviting, and you see it crowded with merry and 
brilliant throngs ; but fiery clouds of Heaven's wrath 
impend, and pit-falls open at every step. Have you 
not, oh, have you not, with your own eyes, seen the 
young, the gay, the thoughtless, fall there, to rise 
no more ? How can you venture further in such a 
path of peril, especially when you know that once 
to fall there is to be lost for ever ! 

Oh, to think that one of those who read these 
lines should thus perish ! Shall it be so with any ? 
Shall it be so with you ? Shall it be written on 
your soul's tombstone, in the great graveyard of 
doomed spirits, "He died impenitent and accursed," 
" He died a lost youth ?" 

What a dreadful thing to die, though young, yet 
enlightened as you are in regard to your duty, and 
from the midst of such opportunities of salvation ! 
Oh, to be so near to the Saviour as almost to touch 



152 GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 

the hem of His garment ; to be so near to Heaven's 
gate, that its melodies seemed to sound in your 
ears, and its glory to beam forth in your face, and 
yet be lost ! How can you bear the peril of it ? 

All that you have ever learned of God, your duty 
and salvation, from the time that you began to say 
an infant's prayer, or to study your Bible, will, in 
such a case, but make your guilt and condemnation 
the worse. Your very knowledge, instead of being, 
as it ought, the means of your salvation, " will then 
prove a magazine of arms for conscience to use" 
against you in a dying hour and through eternity. 
The reading of this very volume, sad thought ! may 
but aggravate your doom, and add fuel to the un- 
dying remorse of a lost spirit. But may I not hope 
that among those who shall peruse it, there will be 
found some that can claim to have already fulfilled 
the precept of the divine message to the young, by 
"remembering" Him "in the days of their youth?" 
If this be your case, I most heartily and joyfully 
congratulate you. Happy, thrice happy are you in 
having yielded thus early obedience to your Maker's 
call. You have chosen, and chosen betimes, that 
" good part which shall never be taken from you." 
Never, never will you repent of that choice. Sweet 
memories will entwine around it and embower it 
more and more, as long as you live on earth, in 
your last departing hour, and through all the im- 
mortality of your life in heaven ! 

I have said how sad it is to think that one of my 
readers may be lost. But how comforting and 
delightful if what I have here written shall be the 






GOD'S message to the young. 153 

means of leading even one of those for whose be- 
nefit this book was designed, to give a youthful 
heart and a youthful life to God. I shall meet you, 
young disciple of Jesus, and child of God ! — I shall 
meet you soon on those celestial shores, where 
youth shall be immortal, and where our whole 
nature shall feel the most intense delight in " re- 
membering," loving, serving, glorifying our great 
Creator. 

But I cannot forget that I am to meet all my 
young readers at the dread tribunal of a world's 
final day. In the last words, therefore, of a writer 
to a reader, who are there to meet each other, and 
each to render his account ; — as one who trusts that 
he has some experience, though much less than he 
ought to have had, of the unspeakable value of early 
religion, and who has heard the dying testimony of 
some 6f his own youthful companions, both Chris- 
tian and unconverted, — the former rejoicing in the 
choice which they had made, the latter lamenting 
theirs in grief and shame, when it was too late, — I 
beseech you to heed the heavenly call conveyed to 
you in those beautiful and interesting words, that 
ought to be so especially beautiful and interesting 
to every young person — " Remember now thy 
Creator in the days of thy youth." 



" Thou art not far from the kingdom of G-od " (Mark xii. 34). 

" Wilt thou not from this time, cry unto me, My Father, thou 
art the guide of my youth " (Jer. iii. 4 ). 

"Your Heavenly Father [shall] give the Holy Spirit to them 
that ask Him" (Luke xi. 13). 



154 god's message to the young. 

" Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken 
away from her " (Luke x. 42). 

" My son, know thou the G-od of thy father, and serve him with 
a perfect heart and with a willing mind : for the Lord searcheth 
all hearts and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts ; 
if thou seek him, he will be found of thee ; but if thou forsake 
him, he will cast thee off for ever." (To Solomon himself by his 
royal father.) (1 Chron. xxviii. 9.) 

" Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth" (1 Sam. hi. 9). 

" That servant which knew his lord's will and prepared not 
himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with 
many stripes. 

" For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much 
required " (Luke xii 4*7, 48). 

"Because I have called and ye refused; ***** j a i so 
will laugh at your calamity ; I will mock when your fear cometh ; 
when your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction com- 
eth as a whirlwind ; when distress and anguish cometh upon 
you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer ; they 
shall seek me early, but they shall not find me ; for that they 
hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord" 
(Prov. i. 24-29). 

" Woe also to them when I depart from them " (Hosea ix. 12). 

"Oh that there were such a heart in them, that they would 
fear me, and keep all my commandments always " (Deut. v. 29). 

" Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they 
would consider their latter end " (Deut. xxxii. 29). 

u A time accepted — the day of salvation " (2 Cor. vi. 2). 

"To-day" (Ps. xcv. 1, and Heb. iv. ?). 

response and prayer of a young reader yield- 
ing to the force of the views that have 
been presented. 

I haye now done. I have heard all that the writer 
has had to address to me. How important, if true ! 
And is it not true — wholly true ? Can I challenge 



god's message to the young. 155 

the correctness of any part of what has been said ? 
These arguments, each in itself how entirely unan- 
swerable and conclusive, how powerful in its truth, 
how sufficient to persuade me, and all of them 
together forming a chain of iron strength and golden 
brightness, which not even an angel's power could 
break. 

A book full of persuasions to youthful religion, 
and every one of them just and important in the 
highest degree. The truth shines clear as sunlight 
from every page. It is the truth of God. My un- 
derstanding assents entirely to the force of these 
considerations. Conscience is wholly on their side. 
The best feelings of my nature, in soft and gentle 
voices, speak all in their favor. And even self- 
interest whispers, in low but startling tones, of the 
balances against me and the awful risks. And all 
the arguments in the case are on one side. Not a 
counterbalancing argument or reason to be op- 
posed to them — not one. What mighty power 
constrains me that I should go against them all ? 
It is my own unholy nature that holds me back. It 
is because there is something that I love better than 
I love God and my duty, that I refuse obedience. 
And is it not most dangerous to yield to such an 
influence as that which now enslaves me, an influ- 
ence which wholly prevents me from being what I 
ought to be, and puts my salvation in constant 
peril ? 

How, in view of all that is here addressed to me, 
ought I most clearly to live in time to come ? How 
foolish and wicked to have spent all the days of my 



156 god's message to the young. 

youth, thus far, as I have done. And how can I 
permit myself to live so any longer ? All that I 
can now do is for the future. I cannot give to God 
that part of my early life which is past. Alas, it is 
gone for ever ! I cannot now think of it as anything 
but wasted and worse than wasted. Let me hasten 
to seek the heavenly aid which will enable me to 
give my great Creator the place in my mind and 
heart that belongs to Him, and to spend for Him 
my remaining youthful days. They will soon fleet 
away. They may end sooner and more suddenly 
than I am prone to expect. And if the gay fancies 
and bright dreams of youth should all at once turn 
to the shadows of death, what would become of 
me ? It has sometimes almost made me tremble to 
repeat that line of the little going-to-bed hymn of 
my childhood: 

" If I should die before I wake." — 

What if I should some night ? It is just what has 
happened to some of my companions who set out 
with a fair prospect of living as long as I, and whose 
graves I already see along the short path I have 
trodden in life. 

And if I live to grow up without religion, I shall 
perhaps live only to become hardened in worldli- 
ness and sin, and at last die with greater guilt and 
condemnation upon my head. 

I have already often put aside the claims of God, 
when pressed upon me. I have resisted many calls 
to " remember Him." My God and Father, give 



god's message to the young. 157 

me the grace to exercise this holy and dutiful re- 
membrance of Thee while it is u now " with me, 
and before the " evil days " come on, in which I 
shall find myself struggling to do, and vainly re- 
gretting that I had not sooner done, the first work 
of life ; or in a dying hour find myself utterly and 
for ever undone. 

O Thou who hast so graciously condescended to 
the young, and whom I have heretofore so much 
forgotten and banished from my heart, let me not 
turn a heedless ear to this new call of thine, given 
me through the book that I have just been reading. 
Let not all the arguments and motives here present- 
ed be lost upon me. Let nothing keep me longer 
away from Thee, and out of the path where my 
highest duty and safety lie. Let the power which 
the world, and Satan, and my evil nature have had 
over me be now broken, and for ever. Let me " be 
willing in the day of Thy power." Henceforth let 
me be Thy child. Let all my days, whether com- 
paratively few or many, be spent for Thee; and 
whether life end in youth, or middle age, or with 
hoary hairs, oh, then, my great and blessed Creator ! 
in Thy love and mercy, for Christ's sake, remember 
Thy unworthy creature and servant, whose prayer 
is now offered before Thee, and who would obey 
the voice of Thy message to him by remembering 
Thee now in the days of his youth. 



god's message to the young. 159 



SEQUEL. 



containing soliloquies, reflections, etc., designed 
to enforce the views presented in the pre- 
ceding pages. 

Let not the reader regard the following sketches 
as mere productions of fancy. They are not, in- 
deed, historical ; neither were the parables of our 
Saviour. Yet were not these parables infallibly truth- 
ful representations of what is everywhere occurring, 
or liable to occur, in the religious history of men ? 
They are only general descriptions personified, or 
represented as if acted out in some individual case. 

So with the soliloquies here given. They em- 
body and personify, each of them, as if in a single 
example and in the utterance of the person, what is 
actually taking place around daily, in multitudes of 
cases. Any one of them, young reader, may be- 
come your own. 

Some of them are in a great measure filled out 
from actual instances, which stand, like beautiful or 
terrific pictures, in my own memory ; and many a 
minister and Christian who looks over them will 
remember cases, within his own observation, that 



160 god's message to the young. 

were the full counterpart of those most strongly 
drawn. 

Which of them, dear youth, shall be your expe- 
rience, of blessing or cursing, of glory or despair ? 

M When youth complained, 
The ancient sinner shook his hoary head, 
As if he meant to say, stop till you come 
My length, and then you may have cause to sigh. 
At twenty, cried the boy, who now had seen 
Some blemish in his joys : How happily 
Plays yonder child that busks the mimic babe, 
And gathers gentle flowers, and never sighs. 
At forty, in the fervor of pursuit, 
Far on in disappointment's dreary vale, 
The grave and sage-like man looked back upon 
The stripling of plump and unseared hope, 
Who galloped gay and briskly up behind, — 
And, moaning, wished himself eighteen again. 
And he of threescore years and ten, in whose 
Chilled age, fatigued with gaping after hope, 
Earth's freshest verdure seemed but blasted leaves, 
Praised childhood, youth, and manhood, and denounced 
Old age alone as barren of all joy. 
Decisive proof that men had left behind 
The happiness they sought, and taken a most 
Erroneous path ; since every step they took 
Was deeper mire." 



GOD'S message to the young. 161 



SOLILOQUY OF A YOUNG PEKSON EMERGING INTO 
ADULT LIFE WITHOUT PIETY. 

11 How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year ! 
My hasting days fly on with full career, 
But my late spring no bud nor blossom showeth." 

Milton. 

I am now at mature age. The season of prepa- 
ration has passed, the season of action has come. 
The heart swells with the proud consciousness of 
being — what I have so long desired to be — a man. 
The world looks bright before me, and the mind is 
animated by the thought of reaching some honor- 
able station in it. The very career of effort by 
which I am to attain that station seems inviting to 
the courage and sanguine feeling of my youthful 
nature. The age at which I have arrived is not a 
period of reflection and retrospection, but rather of 
hope and enterprise. 

Yet thoughts will occasionally flit over me, that 
overshadow somewhat the opening scene. Some 
memories of the past will come up, like the ghost of 
Samuel to Saul. I have myself had some experi- 
ence of disappointment already, and I cannot help 
observing that men hi more mature and busy life, 
even where they seem to be most prospered, look 
8 



162 GOD'S message to the young. 

more serious and care-worn than young persons. 
Who is there, in fact, among them all that when you 
come to know him well, is not found to carry some 
thorn in his bosom ? I find, too, that they all look 
back to their youth as the happiest part of life. Does 
it not seem strange at least that we who are younger 
should be looking forward, with eager desire and 
high expectation, to that stage of life through 
which those persons are now passing, while they 
are looking back from it, with sighs and regrets, to 
the one from which we are now emerging ? 

And then religion, if it has the claims which it 
seems to have, must, at some time or other, receive 
my serious attention ; and I cannot help feeling 
slight compunctions at times for not having attend- 
ed to it in my childhood or early youth, as some of 
my acquaintances have done, who at least seem not 
to regret it. Nor am I free from anxiety when I 
remember that I am now passing beyond those 
years in which we generally see the beginnings of 
piety, and that the means and influences which 
have led to the conversion of so many of my young 
Christian friends have failed of this end with me ! 
And have I not sometimes thought — have I not 
sometimes even promised my conscience and my 
God, that by the time I should arrive at my pre- 
sent age, I would begin a different course. How 
much have I approximated to it ? 

In early life I put off this matter until I should be 
older ; and the opinions which a large proportion of 
my Christian friends seemed practically to hold did 
much to encourage the idea that it would at last 



god's message to the young. 163 

suit better for me to take a decided stand when I 
should grow more nearly to adult age ; for the 
most of them did not appear to attach much conse- 
quence to the religious feelings of my childhood, or 
to have much expectation of their bearing fruit. 
But have I become more thoughtful of my higher 
duties and interests ? Have I even as much sensi- 
bility on these subjects as I had then ? 

A great and wide space seems to lie between 
me and my former religious state ; and I think 
almost as of the " dim visions " of a dream, of the 
time when I read my Bible with some regularity, 
when I could not go to bed without prayer, and 
when I felt the Sabbath to be too holy even for 
trifling conversation or miscellaneous reading. 



164 god's message to the young. 



REFLECTIONS OF AN UNGODLY PERSON AT MIDDLE 
AGE LOOKING BACK ON HIS PAST YEAES. 

" The telescope is turned. 
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings 
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age ; 
Behold him when past by, what then is seen 
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds!" 

** Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt 
Of things impossible." 

" Past hours, 
If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight." 

"My days are like the yellow leaf; 

The bowers and fruit of love are gone, 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone." 

(Byron, in the review of life.) 

Past forty ! One half of the longest life already- 
gone from me ! 

How little did I think, when I was young, that I 
should get to my present age without becoming a 
Christian! And yet it is so. I once flattered 
myself that I would find, in the sober thoughtfulness 
of manhood, something that would favor such a 
change, and I had some hopes that I might be led 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 165 

to form connexions in life, the influence of which 
would be on the same side. 

But has this come true with me ? Has not the 
course of things, in fact, been almost entirely in 
the other direction ? Being destitute of piety my- 
self, I have most naturally fallen in the way of un- 
godly associations and connexions of every sort ; 
or rather kept myself in that way, since I never was 
in any other; — and with the tastes and feelings 
which I have always had, it would have required 
with me strong motive and effort to enter into 
friendships and alliances with any but irreligious 
persons. The operation of things, therefore, in this 
respect, has been the very reverse of what I permit- 
ted myself to hope for. 

And if I have become more sober, I have also 
become more worldly than when I was a youth. 
The cares of life have multiplied upon me, with 
every passing year, till now they seem scarcely to 
allow me time to bestow any reflection upon subjects 
which I once thought, and which I cannot even now 
deny to be, so important. When I have been suc- 
cessful in business, it has led me to enlarge my 
plans, while, on the other hand, the failures and dis- 
appointments I have met with have always filled 
my mind with new anxieties, and spurred me on to 
more desperate exertion. 

Where shall this end ? I have fallen into the 
drift of a tide, that seems even now to be almost 
resistless, while it is rolling stronger and wearing a 
deeper channel the further it flows. And if pride 
and a regard for the opinions of the world restrained 



166 god's message to the young. 

me from following my conscience when I was young. 
I find that they do not exercise a less powerful influ- 
ence over me now. In fact, I have taken my station 
in society ; and if religion did not demand an entire 
change in my pursuits, it would, at least, have to 
work a great revolution in my relations to all 
around me. Indeed, 'I have become habituated to 
my present course of life. I am obliged to say 
that I like it, and like it better the longer I am 
accustomed to it. My tastes are becoming in a 
greater degree assimilated to those of the world 
around me, and I find myself more and more dis- 
severed, every year I live, from the religious part 
of the community. 

This brings to my mind the fact that I have now 
fewer pious friends than I once had. I have not 
made new friends of this class ; while a good many 
that I had in the former part of my life have drop- 
ped off. I can remember some of these whose very 
presence impressed me with a sense of religion, and 
I could myself scarcely help feeling when they died, 
that part of my hope of salvation was gone. 

What have I gained, by postponing this matter 
from early to more advanced life ? When I do, at 
any distant intervals, bring my mind to look at the 
question of becoming a Christian, it seems so diffi- 
cult that I am glad to get rid of the subject ; and 
yet something whispers that it ought not to be so. 
How foolish was I, if religion is indispensable, not 
to seek it while I was young. How much better 
off, as I now see, are they who " remember their 
Creator in the days of their youth !" 



god's message to the young. 167 



GLOOMY THOUGHTS OF AN AGED MAN STILL LIVING 
IN AN UNCONVERTED STATE. 

" How richly were my noon-tide trances hung 
With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys!" 

u And is it in the flight of three-score years 
To push eternity from human thought ?" 

" Souls that have long despised their heavenly birth, 
For three-score years employed with ceaseless care, 
In catching smoke and feeding upon air, 
Conversant only with the ways of man, 
Rarely redeem the short remaining ten." 

" Oh, the dark days of vanity, while here 
How tasteless ! and how terrible when gone !" 

My seventieth birth-day ! And have I indeed at- 
tained the three-score and ten ? How well can I 
remember the time when such a length of years 
seemed almost interminable ! Now,, I have reached 
it, — passed it. And how rapidly,— -how very rapidly 
has time tied away! How long, in prospect — how" 
short, in its reality ! Every year has seemed of 
briefer duration than the one that went before it, 
and the wheels of time have rolled more and more 
rapidly, the further I have advanced and the less of 
life was left. 



168 god's message to the youkg. 

Where are those that began the world with me ? 
When I look around I see scarce any left, and where 
I find one, I behold him tottering and ready to sink 
under the weight of years. I seem to linger far be- 
hind the generation to which I belonged. I am the 
last survivor on a sinking vessel ; but a foot of plank 
is left to stand upon. The next waye will bury me 
for ever beneath the deep waters. 

I am really growing old — very old, — hard as it is 
for me to believe it. And how much of life is there 
yet to come ? The thought startles me when I ask 
myself if all that has gone by has passed so quickly, 
how long will it take me to get to the end, even if 
I reach eighty or ninety years ? I must be stand- 
ing on a very narrow verge. And when I look 
around, all that I see reminds me of the same fact. 

Yes, much as I dislike to entertain the thought, 
in a very few years I must die. Once I could put 
death far off, because it was then possible for me 
still to live many years. Now I necessarily have 
but a small remnant of time left. 

Yet, with all this, I seem to feel far less about 
death, and what is to come after, than I once did. 
I can recall the time when my mind was very much 
alive to the influence of religion ; when I wept under 
appeals from the pulpit, and trembled at the thought 
of death. In my earlier days I thought of old age 
as a period of sober consideration. But, now that 
I am actually drawing near to the last limits of life 
— getting to the point to which I used to look for- 
ward with so much of solemn thought, I am con- 
strained to confess that I feel less than I ever did — 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 169 

far less than I did when I was young. It is a fact 
that cannot but strike me as curious, that while I 
have been getting older, and of coarse getting out 
of life, the world has been growing larger to my 
eyes. 

If there is an eternal state, the confines of which 
I am now approaching, it is still very certain that I 
am more attached to this world than I ever was. I 
have never loved money so much, or been so taken 
up with worldly things as now. 

As to the concerns of another world, I do not feel, 
- — indeed it seems to me that I cannot feel now, as I 
see other people do, and as I once did. My mind 
appears, like the muscles of my body, to be grow- 
ing more rigid and cold with age. Indeed I seem, 
at times, to lose all sense of religion, and am almost 
brought to think that it is wholly an illusion. 

The objects of life which engaged my attention 
when I was young have most of them in a great 
measure lost their attractions, and the ties I once 
felt to be the strongest have nearly all been broken, 
but no new ties, no new objects of attraction draw 
me to another and better world. Whatever may 
be my need of religion, so far from growing more 
in love with it, I feel an increasing distaste for it the 
longer I live. 

I have not entirely forgotten a warning that mi- 
nisters and pious friends used to give me. There 
comes, at times, a thought, like a dreadful whisper 
from another world, that I may have sinned away 
my day of grace, and that all this want of sensi- 
bility may proceed from my being abandoned of 
8* 






170 god's message to the young. 

God. Those who once manifested a particular con- 
cern for my spiritual welfare are, almost all of them, 
dead and gone, while the pious by whom I am now 
surrounded, seem, for some cause, seldom to think 
any longer of praying for me. I feel, when I do 
think of it, as if mountains, that could never be 
passed, had grown up in the path that would lead 
me to God. 

It is fearful to look forward, even if there is room 
to doubt the truth of the Bible. But I find that the 
more I think on the subject, the more I feel the real- 
ity of what it tells me. 

And then it affords me no satisfaction to look 
back. All my enjoyments are gone, and the pro- 
perty I possess, which now I seem to cling to more 
than anything else, will soon be taken from my 
grasp. Whatever there may be to be done for an- 
other world, I have left it all undone. It will be 
hard for me to undertake it now. Would that I 
had decided the matter long ago ! Better that my 
life should even have terminated with my youth, if 
I had but died as I saw some of my young friends 
leave the world, who with their last breath testified 
to the excellency of religion, and exhorted me to 
follow their example and " remember my Creator in 
the days of my youth." When I stand by their 
graves and think of them, how much better off do 
they seem to be, though so early taken away, than 
I am who still survive, and whom most people would 
think happy in having lived so long ! 



god's message to the young, 171 



PLEASANT AND GRATEFUL THOUGHTS OF AN AGED 
CHRISTIAN REVIEWING A LIFETIME SPENT FROM 
EARLY YOUTH IN GOD'S FEAR AND SERVICE. 

" Whose yesterdays look backward with a smile." 

"In sacred memory lives 
The morn of life, first morn of endless days : 
Most joyful morn ! nor yet for naught the joy ; 
A being of eternal date commenced." 

"The Christian had this one advantage more, 
That when his earthly pleasures failed, and fail 
They always did to every soul of man, — 
He sent his hopes on high." 

[The last picture showed us an evening of dreary- 
shadows, its sun setting behind dark clouds that 
flash lightning and mutter thunder. This will in- 
troduce us to a different scene — the evening calm 
and serene, the shadows lengthening indeed, but all 
nature smiling, and the heavens lit up with the 
unearthly glories of a clear sunset.] 

Life — what they call the longest life — what I used 
to think so very, very long — now almost gone ! 
"Who would have thought that I should travel over 
this space so quickly ? My youth, my very child- 
hood are before me as a vivid picture of yesterday. 



172 god's message to the young. 

The fireside, the yard, the garden, of my paternal 
home, the spring, the road to school, the forms of 
my parents, the faces of my playmates — I see them 
all as if yet before me, and I can scarce persuade 
myself that I am not still a little boy and in the 
midst of those scenes ! It is only by recalling events 
which have intervened, that I am able, in any de- 
gree, to bring back the impression of my having 
numbered so many years. 

In looking over the past, I have to mourn that 
my life, so prolonged, in God's mercy, above what 
is common, has not been better spent — that I have 
done so little for the kingdom and glory of Christ, 
and the good of the world in which I have been 
spared to live to so unusual an age. But, O my God, 
I thank Thee, as thy chief mercy to me, that I was 
so early led to the Saviour. I thank Thee, — now that 
I am old, I thank Thee still — for that praying father, 
that saintly mother, whose faces and persons have 
not yet faded from my memory. 

Many, alas ! too many of those I knew in early 
years, have died without a part in Christ, — some in 
life's vernal season, some in its prime. A few yet 
linger, hoary and hardened in sin. I, too, might 
so have lived, so have died. Thanks to the grace 
that preserved me from so living or dying ! 

I have never been sorry for anything that I have 
done in the service of God. My only regrets are that 
I have shown no more of devotion to it. How sweet 
now, while all that this world affords is failing me, 
the recollection of my early Christian days ! Those 
Sabbaths, those walks to church, the Bible I read, 



god's message to the young. 173 

the sacred songs I sang — all embalmed in the che- 
rished associations and glowing affections of that 
spring-time of my existence : — could the world ever 
have given me anything worth half so much as the 
memory of these ? 

Life has fled fast. There is little of it left. But, 
except for the waste of time and opportunities, I 
have no reason to be troubled on account of the near- 
ness of its end. He who has " taught me from my 
youth," who from my youth has been " my hope and 
my trust," and whose wondrous works of mercy to 
me " I have hitherto declared," will " not forsake 
me now when I am old and grey-headed" (Ps. lxxi. 
5, 17, 18)* — I testify His strength to save and 
power to bless, and would leave a record of them 
for those who " are to come" after me. 

" I can declare His goodness to my soul. I long 
for His salvation. I bless His name that I have 
long since found Him, and shall die rejoicing in 
Him. Oh, blessed be God that I was born ! Oh, that 
I was where He is! I have many kindred and 
friends in heaven, and I shall soon be added to their 
company. Oh, there is a telling in this Providence, 
and I shall be telling it for ever. If there has been 
such a glory in His conduct towards me all along 
through life, what will it be to see the Lamb in the 
midst of the throne ? Blessed be God that ever I 
was born !"f 

* The late Dr. A. Alexander, being requested by a young friend to writa 
in her album, wrote the words contained in the two last of these verses. 
t Nearly the exact words of Halyburton, in the review of life. 



174 GOD'S message to the young. 



REMORSE OF A YOUTH DYING WITHOUT A CHRISTIAN 
HOPE, 

11 What pain to quit the world just made their ownl" 
" It is the knell of my departed hours." 

" A moment we may wish 
When worlds want wealth to buy." . 

What did they say ? It cannot be true ; — Oh, 
I cannot, cannot die ! Why did they not tell me 
sooner ? Oh cruelty not to give me the warning of 
a few days, or even a few hours ! I marked the 
gathering seriousness of physicians and friends as 
they came to examine my case, but I never thought 
they would let me leave the world upon so short a 
notice. All eternity crowding upon this breaking 
verge of time. It is too late. I am undone for 
ever ! And is this all of life to me, — all of what 
I had hoped for, dreamed of, and now find I have 
sold heaven for ? Die even before I go forth to act 
a man's part ? 

Ye Christians, whom I now see weeping by my 
last bed, why did you not tell me of this ? Those of 
you who did, why not tell me oftener and more 
earnestly? Why did you not besiege my sin-en- 
trenched conscience night and day ? Why let me 



GOD'S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG. 1*7 5 

have any rest, when you saw me continually in such 
peril? Ministers of God, why did you not even follow 
me from your pulpits, or arrest me, wherever you 
met me, to forewarn me of such an end ? 

But let me not reproach others. The fault* 
is my own. It is all my own, — mine as it can 
be no other person's. The blame would have 
been on me had ministers, had pious teachers, 
friends, been far more cold and careless and 
neglectful of my case than any of them have 
been. This, oh this it is, more than anything 
else, that gives death its sting and invests judgment 
and an approaching eternity with such horrors. I 
feel the shadows of that endless night already com- 
ing over my spirit. 

And was no signal of danger given me ? Have I 
not heard of this, long since, as my possible and even 
approaching doom ? Was it not a part of the first 
lesson that I learned from a venerable father, now 
himself game, — the last that I was reminded of by 
my mother in her own dying hour ? The old Bible 
of the family whose leaves I turned over when I 
was a child, and that one bestowed as a gift of 
parental love ; sermons, communion seasons, revival 
scenes, conversions of young companions around me, 
my own sicknesses and afflictions, solemn and tender 
thoughts under preaching, at funerals, and on lying 
doAvn at night ; — death-beds, oh, some the very 
counterpart of mine, — the picture of what I was 
coming to, drawn before my very eyes ; — a father's 
last prayer for me, as life itself, with him, breathed 
out ; — a mother's last, last kiss, as she drew me to 



176 GOD'S message to the youi*g. 

the bedside, to give me her dying embrace, — her 
face, — its paleness startled me, but all a mother's 
soul was in those eyes ! That image, it has stood 
there enstamped on my memory ever present to me, 
ever calling me back to God and heaven, as I wan- 
dered further away ; — oh, it haunts me now ! Shall 
it haunt me for ever ? Father, mother ! well it is 
for you that you are not here, to see your child die 
thus; well for you that you were taken when you 
were ; it was in mercy to you. Was it in judgment 
to me for my impenitence and resistance ? And 
those words of a divine message, hung out over all 
my youthful path, " Remember, remember now," — 

Yes, I was fully, fully forewarned. Fool ! mad- 
man ! I have pulled down everlasting perdition on 
my own head. 

Days of my childhood and youth, golden days of 
instruction and opportunity ! Could tears, and 
sighs, and cries of agony recall you ! But no, life's 
morning, its sweet morning, is fled ! I ha^ wasted, 
worse than wasted it. Oh, could I be for one hour, 
where I so often was, — almost at heaven's gate, as 
now seems to me, — at that father's, mother's house- 
hold prayers — under the pastor's calls — in the Sun- 
day-school class, by the side of my young Christian 
companions, or at the place where the youthful in- 
quirers met ; — worlds, oh worlds 



god's message to the young. Ill 



MEDITATIONS AT THE GEAVE-STONE OF A FRIEND 
WHO DIED AFTER A YOUTH OF PIETY. 

A hopeless youthful death, such as we have just 
been contemplating, is a sudden and awful eclipse of 
life's early day. In what follows we shall see a 
morning, soft and lovely in itself, filled with sweet 
airs, the perfume of flowers and the songs of birds, 
exchanged for the fadeless glories of the celestial day. 

" When faith and love, which parted from thee never, 
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with G-od, 
Meekly thou didst resign the earthly load 
Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever 
Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavor 
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod, 
But, as faith pointed with her golden rod, 
Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever. 
Love led them on, and faith, who knew them best 
Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beam 
And azure wings, that up they flew so drest 
And spake the truth of thee, on glorious themes 
Before the judge ; who thenceforth bid thee rest 
And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams." 

(Milton — on the Death of a Pious Female Friend). 

How small a sum of years does this tablet tell of! 
To live not even a score of them and then die— 
what a brief lifetime ! It seems — our acquaintance 
and intercourse — like some sweet dream, that passes 
soon, too soon away ! 



178 god's message to the young. 

That juvenile form and face, that countenance 
illuminated, as it seemed so constantly to be, with a 
love and kindness and peace that did not belong 
even to other young faces ; the picture stands fresh 
in my memory, and will as long as I live. Our 
pleasant walks and talks — our common enjoyment 
of our recreations and of nature's beauties, of 
flowers and the song of birds, of the charms of 
music, of entertaining books, of social pleasures ; — 
but this was not all, or the most, that made that 
friendship and that friend so dear. Rather was it 
the Bible which I saw daily taken out and read — 
the bedside prayers which made me feel that God 
was near to us — the Sabbaths, when that young face 
seemed to beam with a more than usual holy peace, 
— the words of kind monition dropped from time to 
time — the lines from that familiar hand, or the tracts 
and good books, sent on the same kind errand. 
These, oh, these are what have most contributed to 
endear and hallow the memory of our youthful in- 
tercourse. 

Friend of my early days! shall I meet thee in 
heaven ? God sent thee to draw me there ! That 
farewell was not for ever. Thou art separated from 
me, but not lost to me, O loved one ! The sweet 
ties of our early friendship are not broken. Thou 
seemest indeed still near to me. 

This spot is one on which I love to linger. Where 
the mortal part sleeps of those who die in Jesus, and 
especially of one young like thee, nature seems to 
wear its sweetest smile. The verge of such a grave 
is like the verge of heaven. 



god's message to the young. 179 

Thou wast early taken, clear friend ; — it seemed 
too early. Thy life in its close appeared to thee to 
have been short, — and much shorter was it than 
thou hadst once dreamed it would be. The world, 
as thou saidst, still looked bright to thine eyes. It 
had many objects in it that were dear to thy heart, 
and they never were dearer than then. Many 
hopes for the future hadst thou cherished. Thou 
seemedst to thyself to be but just entering upon the 
path of Christian usefulness. 

And so we too had thought. Thy heart panted 
to do something high and noble for Christ and for a 
lost world. But the Master took thee at thy word. 
He gave thee the crown and spared thee the labor. 
And though ready to serve Him here, thou didst 
joyfully obey His call. Thou hast risen to a higher 
service than that which our hopes, had marked out 
for thee on earth. 

How much of toil and trouble, of temptation and 
sin hast thou perhaps escaped, by such a speedy re- 
lease ! How safe now with Him in whom thou 
didst put thy early trust, to whom thou didst give 
thy early affections! How happy in His nearer com- 
munion and more exalted service ! Of what price- 
less value that devotion of thy youthful life to Him! 
How much is it worth now, in the celestial reminis- 
cences of it, and in its fruits of eternal joy ! 

How happy, in life and in death, are they who 
"remember their Creator in the days of their 
youth." 

" Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,' 3 



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